Nolan to debate future of film as part of a new series of talks on the industry side of the BFI London Film Festival.
The 59th BFI London Film Festival (Oct 7-18) has unveiled a new series of industry talks under the banner LFF Connects, which will aim to explore the future of film and how the medium engages with other creative industries including TV, music, art, games and creative technology.
Interstellar director Christopher Nolan and artist Tacita Dean, whose exhibitions include the grand-scale FILM at the Tate Modern, will launch the new series on Oct 9 at London’s BFI Southbank with a conversation that “reframes the future of film”.
The conversation, moderated by BFI creative director Heather Stewart, will see Nolan and Dean explore the importance of seeing films projected on film as part of our cultural experience, as well as the necessity of determining new archival and exhibition standards that secure film’s future.
Nolan, the British director behind The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, has led the vanguard for filmmakers wanting to work with film. US directors Judd Apatow, Bennett Miller and JJ Abrams joined him last year in making the case for film, which contributed to Kodak committing to continue to make and provide negative, intermediate and archival film.
They will also be joined in the discussion by Alexander Horwath, director of the Austrian Film Museum who has written and spoken extensively about the importance of showing film as film and preservation.
Fighting for film
Dean, a British artist based in Berlin, is internationally renowned for her 16mm and 35mm films. In 2011, the former Turner Prize nominee made FILM for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London - an 11-minute silent 35mm film projected onto a gigantic white monolith standing 13 metres.
Dean, a founding member of savefilm.org, said: “As an artist who makes and exhibits film for reasons indexical to the medium, I have had no choice but to fight to get film re-appreciated for what it is: a beautiful, robust and entirely different way of making and showing images in the gallery and in the cinema.
“Film has characteristics integral to its chemistry and internal discipline that form my work and I cannot be asked to separate the work from the medium that I used to make it.
“We need to keep the medium distinct from the technology; we need to keep the choice of film available for artists, filmmakers and audiences.”
Leading figures from other creative fields who are having an impact film will be announced for the LFF Connects series in the coming weeks.
New direction
LFF festival director Clare Stewart said: “This year we launch a new direction for the BFI London Film Festival’s industry engagement programme – building on the position of London as one of the world’s leading creative cities – with LFF Connects, a series of events designed to look at the future of film and its intersection with the wider creative industries.
“We could not hope to have a more dynamic, impactful launch than to bring together Christopher Nolan and Tacita Dean, two of the greatest creators working in film and art to discuss the future of film as a medium.”
Further LFF industry events are to be announced in the coming weeks.
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