Tri­cia Tut­tle on what to expect from the 64^th BFI Lon­don Film Festival

This year has pre­sent­ed an unprece­dent­ed chal­lenge to organ­is­ers of film fes­ti­vals around the world, with many major events – from Cannes to Toron­to – being either can­celled of held vir­tu­al­ly. That film fans in the UK will soon be able to access some 50 pre­mieres, not to men­tion a whole host of free work­shops and screen talks, is tes­ta­ment to the tire­less efforts of BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val Direc­tor Tri­cia Tut­tle and her team of pro­gram­mers and event co-ordinators.

With the 64^th LFF just a few weeks away, we caught up with Tut­tle to find out what audi­ences can expect from the first ever pre­dom­i­nant­ly dig­i­tal edi­tion, and how the fes­ti­val has over­come the restric­tions cre­at­ed by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic to cre­ate a ful­ly acces­si­ble, tru­ly UK-wide cel­e­bra­tion of cin­e­ma. Here’s what she had to say…

“Real­is­ti­cal­ly, it would have tak­en a lot for us not to deliv­er some ver­sion of the fes­ti­val, but arriv­ing at the mod­el that we ulti­mate­ly have was real­ly tricky. We went through count­less ver­sions of the fes­ti­val try­ing to work out dif­fer­ent finan­cial mod­els, dif­fer­ent ways we could ensure audi­ences had access. We realised that with cin­e­mas oper­at­ing at 30 per cent capac­i­ty, audi­ence access would be severe­ly lim­it­ed; we knew that we need­ed to do some­thing to make sure that audi­ence could still see these great films. We’re a pub­lic-fac­ing fes­ti­val, so that vir­tu­al pre­mière ele­ment became even more impor­tant, but also get­ting audi­ences back into cin­e­mas was real­ly impor­tant in us fig­ur­ing out how the mod­el was going to work this year.

“We’re work­ing in part­ner­ship, in new ways, with some great inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas around the coun­try and in Lon­don to be able to pro­vide that access in cin­e­mas, on the big screen, which is such a cru­cial part of the festival’s DNA. Out­side of Lon­don we’re work­ing with the Fan Hub Lead­ers which are part of the Film Audi­ence Net­work fund­ed by the Lot­tery via the BFI. These are impor­tant cin­e­mas and cul­tur­al hubs across the UK, from Glas­gow and Belfast to Sheffield, Man­ches­ter, Bris­tol… It’s a gen­uine­ly UK-wide fes­ti­val. We’re also work­ing with venues that we typ­i­cal­ly part­ner with in Lon­don, albeit in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way than in pre­vi­ous years; it’s much more of a part­ner­ship rather than a takeover.

“The BFI South­bank is our home – it’s where the fes­ti­val team is locat­ed – but it was impor­tant for us this year that it not feel like the fes­ti­val was still hap­pen­ing at the BFI South­bank as usu­al with dif­fer­ent ver­sions of it being rolled out else­where. It real­ly is a de-localised event this year – the expe­ri­ence you have at the BFI South­bank will be very much like the expe­ri­ence that you will have at HOME in Man­ches­ter, or the Water­shed in Bris­tol, or Chap­ter in Cardiff…

“It’s been hard for us, as it has been for a lot of inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas and film­mak­ers and busi­ness­es, but one thing that I feel real­ly pos­i­tive about is that all the things that mat­ter to us – audi­ence access, cre­at­ing greater UK-wide access to the fes­ti­val, the over­all expan­sion of the fes­ti­val pro­gramme – we’ve been able to achieve. Lots of the goals that we set out for our­selves have been met, and it feels great to present a new mod­el where we’ve been able to find cre­ative solu­tions to many of the chal­lenges and obstruc­tions of the year.

“Our new strand if called LFF Expand­ed, and it real­ly will be in the future an expan­sive space for pro­gram­ming – you might have live cin­e­ma per­for­mances, you might have VR, you might have dig­i­tal art exhi­bi­tions. The idea is to actu­al­ly get peo­ple out of cin­e­mas and get them engag­ing with dig­i­tal screen-based arts in a dif­fer­ent way. This year, like every­thing in the fes­ti­val, we’ve had to adapt our plans. We’ve cre­at­ed almost like a vir­tu­al muse­um where you’ll be able to see 20 new vir­tu­al and mixed real­i­ty projects, 360 film­mak­ing projects. The best way to expe­ri­ence these will be if you have an Ocu­lus Quest or teth­ered head­set at home, but we’re also going to have a por­tal at the BFI South­bank which is free to access, where you can book in and explore this vir­tu­al plat­form. I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in where film­mak­ers and visu­al artists are going with this technology.

“There’s so many things I’m look­ing for­ward to at this year’s fes­ti­val, but one film I think every­one should see just because it’s so uplift­ing is Her­self by Phyl­l­i­da Lloyd. It’s co-writ­ten by Clare Dunne who also stars in the film, and it’s just such a mov­ing and hope­ful sto­ry about a woman who leaves an abu­sive rela­tion­ship, takes her two daugh­ters with her and builds her own house. It’s exact­ly the kind of thing that I think peo­ple need to see this year.”

The 64^th BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs 7 – 18 Octo­ber. Explore the full pro­gramme here.