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Source: Screen International

PETA protestors at the LFF closing night

Protestors from animal rights group PETA disrupted the closing night of the 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) causing a brief delay to the European premiere of Morgan Neville’s Pharrell Williams film Piece By Piece.

Prior to the screening, while festival director Kristy Matheson was asking questions to Neville and Williams, two men draped a barrier over the balcony at the Royal Festival Hall and began shouting about animal rights, including directly towards Williams. The full video of the protest, with responses from Matheson and Williams, is available below.

The banner read ’Pharrell: Stop Supporting Killing Animals for Fashion’, while the men shouted words including “Shame on you, Pharrell. Animals are skinned alive and tortured.”

Matheson attempted to placate the protestors from the stage and thanked them for their message, before beginning to guide her guests off-stage to start the film.

“Thank you very much, what we’re going to do is we’re going to leave the stage for a moment,” said Matheson. “Thank you for your moment,” she said, addressing the protestors directly. “One minute, please.”

Williams – who was also suffering from illness that limited the strength of his speech – then intervened, saying he didn’t want the protestors to control the narrative.

“God bless you. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And the changes that they seek don’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of planning. We are working on those things,” said Williams. “They wanted to be heard so we heard them,” he said of the protestors. He went on to introduce the film and thank the audience for attending the screening.

The protestors were removed from the auditorium by security, with the film beginning following a delay of just a couple of minutes. The protests follow similar action at Toronto, where Piece By Piece had its world premiere.

Alongside his work as a music artist and producer, Williams is creative director for high-end fashion brand Louis Vuitton, which is owned by French company LVMH. LVMH uses animal products in certain items, including skins and furs.

“At tonight’s protest at RFH our Security team followed the protocol, asked the protestors to leave and then escorted the protestors out of the auditorium,” said a BFI statement.

“Pharrell interacted with the protestors on-stage. We feel it was managed well and any attempt to remove them earlier would have exacerbated the problem.”

“While Pharrell’s life story is told in this navel-gazing film, animals are confined in filth on farms before their heads are bashed in and their skin is ripped off while they’re still conscious – all so pieces of their bodies can be made into Louis Vuitton’s fleeting fashion pieces,” read a statement from Kate Werner, UK senior campaigns manager at PETA. “PETA is calling on Pharrell to use his power for good, stop being complicit in cruelty, and push Louis Vuitton into the 21st century by refusing to use wild-animal skins and fur.”

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