BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val announces vir­tu­al 2020 edition

As the ever-present threat of a glob­al pan­dem­ic has made group gath­er­ings in con­tained spaces all but impos­si­ble, film fes­ti­vals have had no choice but to throw out the play­book and start from scratch. Pro­gram­ming direc­tors must answer the exis­ten­tial ques­tion of what a week of trib­ute to the movies might look like with­out the act of going to the movies, and BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val is ready to take a crack at the quandary.

The fes­ti­val has today laid out an ambi­tious plan to over­haul this year’s edi­tion, with vir­tu­al screen­ings bring­ing buzzy pre­mieres from the red car­pet to your liv­ing room. From 7 to 18 Octo­ber, the cus­tom­ary com­bi­na­tion of cin­e­ma and sup­ple­men­tary events with the peo­ple mak­ing it will go online to restore some faint sense that life is con­tin­u­ing onward.

The notice states that 50 films from around the world will get a time-win­dowed vir­tu­al pre­mière through this year’s LFF, with twelve selec­tions play­ing in spe­cial pre­views at part­ner cin­e­mas around the UK. (This is based on the pre­sump­tion that cin­e­mas will be oper­a­tional again by Octo­ber.) Each screen­ing will be accom­pa­nied by an intro or Q&A with cre­ative per­son­nel to give the pro­ceed­ings that film-fes­ti­val feel, or ​“online salons” facil­i­tat­ing spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion and respect­ful debate about the film just shown.

As usu­al, a host of addi­tion­al offer­ings will but­tress the main pro­gramme, a line­up includ­ing the fan-favored Screen Talks series plac­ing direc­tors in con­ver­sa­tion with actors. This year also boasts the launch of a Vir­tu­al Exhi­bi­tion of XR and Immer­sive Art (span­ning head­set and head­set-free works), as well as the cus­tom­ary pro­gram of free-to-view short films.

Fes­ti­val Direc­tor had this to say regard­ing the announcement:

“Like many oth­er live events around the world, we’ve had to make changes to our plans in response to a glob­al pan­dem­ic, fac­tor­ing in safe­ty con­cerns and restric­tions – some known, some still unclear. But as we’ve under­gone this plan­ning we’ve also wit­nessed his­tor­i­cal inter­na­tion­al protests, an urgent reminder of just how much we need to do to com­bat racism and inequality.

This year has also giv­en us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to think cre­ative­ly about how we make the Fes­ti­val more acces­si­ble. It was vital to us that we get back to cin­e­mas, and are look­ing for­ward to work­ing with inde­pen­dent and cul­tur­al venues across the UK who are such an essen­tial part of our film ecosys­tem. The Vir­tu­al LFF pro­grammes and these cin­e­ma screen­ings take the Fes­ti­val out across the UK, giv­ing peo­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage in dif­fer­ent ways.”

Per­haps the most eye­brow-rais­ing change con­cerns the ques­tion of who can jury a fes­ti­val of this unique nature. To that effect, LFF will intro­duce Audi­ence Awards for Best Fic­tion Fea­ture, Best Doc­u­men­tary Fea­ture, Best Short Film and Best XR, to be vot­ed on by reg­u­lar watch­ers from the com­fort of their own home. With a shak­en-up array of films select­ed this year, how­ev­er, the fes­ti­val will tem­porar­i­ly do away with the Gala and Com­pe­ti­tion dis­tinc­tions while main­tain­ing the sub­cat­e­gories of Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Jour­ney, Cre­ate, Fam­i­ly, Trea­sures and Experimenta.

The oth­er pieces of the fes­ti­val can be more sim­ply brought online; the press and indus­try atten­dees can still see every­thing in advance, via the LFF vir­tu­al plat­form, and the Crit­ics Men­tor­ship pro­gramme will con­tin­ue to fos­ter a diverse new gen­er­a­tion of writer­ly voic­es, pre­sum­ably via video-chat­ting between the youths and the expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als offer­ing them counsel.

While the most press­ing issue – name­ly, which movies will run at the fes­ti­val – has yet to be clar­i­fied, the BFI has tak­en encour­ag­ing mea­sures to dig­i­tize their infra­struc­ture. There’s an argu­ment to be made that rub­bing shoul­ders with oth­er cinephiles is an inte­gral part of the film fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence, but until we can all breathe easy, this will be a work­able fac­sim­i­le of the real deal.

LFF 2020 runs 7 – 18 Octo­ber. For more info vis­it bfi​.org​.uk/lff