In October of last year, I attended my third consecutive BFI London Film Festival and wrote my second consecutive article on it for my universities magazine, however this time I was privileged to have the chance to speak with the festivals director. I hope you find my transcript as insightful as I found the interview. Enjoy!
Dan: Hello Tricia, thank you for talking with me today and congratulations on a brilliant film festival, my first question is simply, do you have a favourite film at the festival and if so what is it?
Tricia: Not a Single Favourite, genuinely there are so many films in the programme that I really love and the kind of joy of the job is that I get to see so many films. I probably get to see about 70% of the programme. I mean the thing that really struck me this year were incredible debuts, things like Judy and Punch and Saint Maud and Atlantics and Babyteeth, all debut films that felt so distinctive and ambitious.
Dan: Can you talk me through the process of directing a festival?
Tricia: Films come into the festival in lots of different ways. It’s a long textured process that’s pretty complex. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward. I’m the festival director, I oversee the programme and also some of the operations team as well, so all teams report back into me. I stay very involved in the programme, because that’s really what a festival is all about, that’s the main thing. I have three full time programmers and then we take on an assistant programmer in about April who works with us three days a week so its four in house programmers and then we have a team of about thirty advisors who, some of them do, small amounts, some of them do, lots, but each one of them has a special area so it might be first viewing films that come in via open submission or it might be a specialism in south Asian cinema or east Asian cinema or it might be something like an advisor who specialises in genre. So each one of them brings a different area of expertise.
Every film that gets into the programme is viewed by a minimum of two people, so we do a lot of first watching and then if someone thinks it’s really worth other people watching then they will pass it on and say “definitely watch this and I’m recommending it for this section.” So it gets passed on to other people and we have weekly meetings where we come together and discuss the films and once something has been viewed by two people and those two people are really passionate about it, generally it will get into the programme very late on, as in end of July, or iig we’re really loving the programme sometimes there are things we are really passionate about that might be too similar to something we already have in the programme so we don’t always get to invite everything just because we love it but generally we’re lucky because we have a big programme and we try for lots of different audiences.
So Yeah if two people see it and feel it should move forward, it proves distinctive and it’s really not something that we’ve seen before then generally it will be instantly an invitation if they really like it and they think it’s something we will want to look it but we might hold on an invitation and see what else is similar in the programme then that might happen. It’s just a process, a long process of adding films and always stepping back to look at the overall texture and shape of the programme, we think a lot about different audiences that come to the festival and what films we have for different audiences, so to give an example, we might look at cult horror films and sort of think about those as the group, we might look at LGBTQ+ films and think about those as a group, we may be thinking about audiences from particular countries or maybe older audiences or indie younger audiences, we tend to look at different sections of the programme, so it takes about 9 months and lots and lots of talking to put the programme to bed.
We’re also always thinking of things like balance of how new the films are so that’s another, we call them our matrix’s, after we get to a critical place lets say anywhere from around thirty films we start stepping back at every meeting and looking at them against different matrix’s so we might be looking at our countries bread or we might be looking at things like our gender split or films that appeal to younger audiences or older audiences or films that have a sort of specialised audience. So each meeting after we start to get a critical mass of films is about looking at the texture of the programme and the shape of the programme and making sure we keep balance in that programme and part of that balance is about freshness too, so probably a third of our films are from festivals from January to the end of May and then another third will be from summer festivals and then the final films will be either world premiering at our festival or having a world premiere at Venice or Toronto and then playing our festival immediately after. We try to keep a balance too.
Dan: You said this was a 9 month process. When does this process begin?
Tricia: It starts in earnest in January and we lock the programme in August.
Dan: How do you go about selecting the films and deciding which galas are which?
Tricia: That is also a textured process that’s different each time. The Patrons Gala (A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood), for example, the team who look after our patrons might give me a few ideas about what we’ve had, we’ve had a costume drama last year so we’ll look for something a little bit different this year, so they were thinking about making sure that their audience sees a wide range of films so we’ll get e brief from them and then pick a couple of films that we think might work for that position.
There are only four galas in the festival, headline galas, where we work with partners and then there are three media partner screenings so this is normally a very small portion of our programme, but we generally try to match things they might be looking for in any one particular year, they are very very flexible about these and we have to keep it that way because ultimately we have to programme the films we feels right for the festival , but we try to think about what kind of brief they have given us and be sympathetic to that too.
But really it’s just about getting the right film, same for audiences. Again, it’s a lot of discussion at every stage and it’s about healthy debate and dialogue about where something fits how big its gunna play, what’s the right cinema, what’s the right fit culturally for that film in terms of the cinema.
Dan: What impact does or can the festival have the UK and worldwide distribution of the films screened?
Tricia: Yeah, probably 40% of our programme has a UK distributor attached by the end of the festival, sometimes that might be because a distributor had it already and they wanted us to have a look at it and potentially play it and it would be a moment for them to think about launching that film to UK audiences so the beginning of their campaign in the UK. Or it might be something that a distributor is looking at with the sales company and then we invite it and the sales company relay that to the distributor and the distributor is positive about that and that helps with the sale of the film. Or, it might be that we play it at the festival and we demonstrate to a distributor that there is an audience for a film and the film gets picked up after the festival.
Dan: Do you invite distributors to the festival?
Tricia: Yes we do, we got a programme called “Buyers and Sellers” or “Meet the Buyers” as it used to be called. We invite sales companies, these are sales companies may have a film in the festival but they will come and talk through their whole slate with UK distributors, so we have generally do these meeting with all of the UK distributors and sales agents that we provided.
Dan: Just to be clarify, 40% of films already have UK distributors attached?
Tricia: Or by the end of the festival have a distributor attached. Quite often, they (LFF Films) get picked up between the time we invite the film and the time we finish the festival. So if you read like, Screen, Variety or The Hollywood Reporter during any of this festival you’ll quite often see announcements made about deals that have been made during the festival, over the course of the festival.
Dan: How has this year’s festival compared to previous years? How has directing the festival differed from your previous roles at the BFI?
Tricia: I think the things that were different, well this year and last year we have reduced very slightly, by about 9% the number of feature films we screen, we’re just trying to focus on those, we’ve increased the public access to the festival in both years with different things, so last year for the first time we opened up our awards presentation to public audiences, so the official competition, the first feature and documentary competition and short film competition we presented the awards in front of a public audience who bought a ticket for a mystery film, not knowing who’s gunna win and then at the start of the film the Jury’s president presented the award to the winning filmmaker and then the audience watch the film just as a sort of way to open up what used to be a very exclusive, industry only, by invite event and try and make it more in keeping with the ethos of the festival which is about giving audience access to everything we do, as that’s one of the things here we see as really important and unique about the London film festival is public access so you can walk the red carpet with the talent if it’s a gala or try and do a Q&A that’s linked to the screenings.
Then this year another thing we did for the first time was introduce a new programme called “LFF for Free” which was a pilot this year but it went really well which was 33 screenings and events really concentrated largely on the weekend but we had a few things during the week as well and they were free short film programmes (screenings with intros from the filmmakers), free screening of the Quay brothers new film on 35mm a Q&A with them, a mini masterclass with a BAFTA Winning screenwriter and some VR and MXR immersive showcase, so things like that.
Dan: Was there anything new you wanted to bring to the festival?
Tricia: I think to build on what is a long tradition of access making sure that audiences have access to films which the market isn’t necessarily providing a wide range of films, making sure that the festival is one and inclusive, that it has a sort of history in the knowledge of the BFI behind it and our curators are really incredibly knowledgeable, but it is also even when we’re showing something that we know a lot about that we make audiences feel like even if its new to them, being a welcoming festival. It is absolutely the kind of festival we want to create. So whether you’ve seen one film in the festival or you’re one of the many people who goes to see 25 plus, we want you to feel at home and comfortable coming to a screening and asking a question of a filmmaker.
Dan: Are there any films that kind of just missed out on being included in the programme?
Tricia: We don’t like to talk about that, we like to focus on the 233 features in the festival and more than 160 shorts so there is a lot to talk about there. But I would encourage audiences to try and follow up some of the films which maybe will have small releases and feature more adventurous filmmakers who we really think are filmmakers to watch, so coming out since Friday is The Last Black Man in San Francisco from Joe Talbot he’s in our first feature competition and really incredible and impressive for a feature, when I was talking about strong debuts with filmmakers who really have a voice I would include Joe in that, and also to Monos that’s coming out on Friday which is from Alejandro Landes and that won our best film award.
I would watch out for Portrait of A Lady on Fire from Celine Sciamma and Judy and Punch from Mirrah Foulkes so if you want to stay home and watch things there’s Atlantics by Mati Diop is now on Netflix or I’ll be in the next couple of weeks and she won the jury prize in Cannes and we screened her in our debut feature competition and she won that here that’s really exciting, she’s particularly a filmmaker who people like the films of Claire Denis might have seen her as an actress previously.
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