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20 Somersault
December 2012
THE LONDON FILM SOCIETY work of the School and the next generation of cinematic talent. In return for a yearly donation to LFS, members enjoy unrivalled behindthe-scenes access to the inner workings of the School including invitations to exclusive workshops, screenings, dinners and discussions. The London Film Society, launched in 2011, is our membership programme aimed at raising vital funds for LFS. Inspired by Britain’s first Film Society founded in 1925, whose members included H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Maynard Keynes and Anthony Asquith, the Society is enrolling influential patrons to play a crucial role in supporting the
Speakeasy, an invitation only screening, dinner and discussion event, continued into its third year, with the aim of renewing and inspiring critical, ambitious film thought, discussion and practice. Films screened included BAD TIMING presented by Penny Woolcock, THE INNOCENTS with LFS Honorary Associate Rita Tushingham and SUTURE with Jonathan Romney.
LFS director, Ben Gibson, said: “The London Film Society is the first step in a longer-term strategy to secure the future of the school. It’s a chance for us to reach out and form relationships with key individuals and organisations that can help us maintain our position as a world-class training provider. Society members are making a direct stand for LFS’ role within the industry.”
Q&A@LFS, our termly screenings and conversations with leading and emerging filmmakers continued to expand in 2012, helping feed contemporary debate and new work into full time teaching and bringing audiences into the school space and culture every week. Partnerships with New British Cinema Quarterly,
Current Society members are: David Aukin BBFC Don Boyd Dan Chambers Will Clarke Tony and Janey Elliott Stephen Garrett Goodman Derrick LLP Keith Greenhalgh Christopher Hird Patricia Jackson Olivier Kaempfer Paul Kafka Lee & Thompson Mike Leigh Waseem Mahmood OBE Odile and Marc Mourre Franc Roddam Lisa Marie Russo Michael Sackler Anthony Smith Membership is available on an individual or corporate basis. For more information, please email development@lfs.org.uk.
London Film Festival, Korean Film Festival, Russian Film Festival and ENO fed into this series and guests included directors Danny Boyle, William Friedkin, Yorgos Lanthimos, Mike Figgis, Im Kwon Taek, Asif Kapadia, Vitaly Mansky, Grant Gee, Dave McKean; actors Anamaria Marinca, Stellan Skarsgard, Anna Madeley and Christine Bottomley; producer Paul Webster. Alumni returning to the school included Oliver Hermanus (BEAUTY), Kieron Hawkes (PIGGY), Duccio Chiarini (HIT THE ROAD GRANNY), Barry Navidi (producer WILDE SALOME), Enrico Tessarin (producer THE KNOT) and Ivan Strasburg (cinematographer TREME).
Danny Boyle spoke to a packed house for Q&A@LFS
HONORARY ASSOCIATES
SUMMER SCHOOL even hotter in 2013 (page 4)
LOW BUDGET FILM FORUM en route to Romania (page 5)
DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES at the Berlinale (page 5)
LFS WORKSHOPS Fast Forward your career (page 4)
Somersault
ISSUE THREE LFS ANNUAL REVIEW - DECEMBER 2012
Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien became LFS Honorary Associates at the 2012 Annual Show
LFS has a long tradition of honouring figures who have made significant contributions to the film industry, going back to 1956 when its previous incarnation The London School of Film Technique was founded. Such luminaries as
Akira Kurasawa, Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, John Huston, Joseph Losey and Luchino Visconti were Honorary Associates of the school. We are delighted to award Honorary Associateships to director Ken Loach and producer Rebecca O’Brien at our 2012 Annual Show. They have worked together on fifteen feature films including Land and Freedom, Sweet Sixteen, My Name is Joe, Looking for Eric and The Angel’s Share. Both have also mentored LFS MA Filmmaking students. Recent recipients include directors William Friedkin, Stephen Frears, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Lester, Pawel
THE NEXT WAVE Pawlikowski, Mike Figgis, Abbas Kiarostami, Jack Gold and Amma Asante, producers Jeremy Thomas and Tessa Ross, actors Gillian Anderson, Jim Broadbent, Samantha Morton and Rita Tushingham, film critic Philip French, as well as retired LFS faculty members Cedric James, Rodney Newton, Roy Pointer, Colin Tucker and Chrissy Bright.
William Friedkin became an Honorary Associate of The London Film School, at a special anniversary screening of The Exorcist, in association with Time Out.
A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SPONSORS AND PARTNERS
Welcome to SOMERSAULT. This yearbook exists to introduce the talent we’re excited to have found (and perhaps shaped) in 2012, and to remind both school and film industry what we’re about: training, challenging and supporting new filmmakers, screenwriters and curators to a point where they can sensibly plan the next 100 things they want to learn, become visible and get proper work.
Inevitably, graduation film screenings and DVD compilations bring to light only a slither of the school’s work. None of the frequently exceptional work made for the five film exercises on the MA Filmmaking (around 110 films a year, many already playing in festivals around the world) makes it to the programme. You can find these on the showreels of our 2012 LFS Associates (as we call our graduates). Screenwriting MA Associates have their own showcase of 5 minute professionally performed extracts a day after the filmmakers
(December 12 at 24 Shelton Street), where there will also be a keynote from the screenwriter and showrunner Frank Spotnitz. Curating MA Associates presented a multiplicity of ‘final project’ events around London over the summer, and their brochures and blogs remain to remind us of these special one-offs. 2012 has been a year of big successes for LFS, with numerous festival attendances and prizes, feature films commissioned, delivered and screened around the world. For this we thank the school’s extraor- On location with Rebecca Marshall’s graduation film GLITTER AND STORM dinary permanent staff, visiting lecturers and men- from 2013 we will offer an bringing together energies tors, who apply such energy MA Independent Film and ideas from many disciwith the plines, and we thank and and imagination to foster- Business ing innovation, insisting on University of Exeter. This is welcome our new partners excellence and construct- a sign of our focus on devel- at Exeter. ing unique solutions to oping production, distribution and independent film This has also been an Vaughan, documentary editor and each unique problem. writer, who attended the very first business skills. The degree important year for the Diploma course in 1956 and A major announcement for represents a wholly new school’s future. The publiMarioulo Diaz Abaya, the awardthis December is that after approach to the profession- cation of the Smith Report winning Philippine director. They planning, al skill-sets of the business, died in May, June and October considerable
A Message from Mike Leigh, our Chairman
2D Design Avid Barbican British Council Buzzacott Cirro Lite Columbia School of the Arts Danish Film School DeJonghe Labs dffb ENO ESCAC Essex Insurance Brokers Film London Fisher Goodman Derrick LLP Hampshire Street Studios Harbottle and Lewis Image Systems Institut Francais Kodak
La femis Lee & Thompson London Metropolitan University MOME Panalux Panavision PEC Pinewood Studios Group Pinsent Masons RADA Ronford Scuola Holden SFZE TCSoho The Leathersellers’ Company The National Gallery UNATC University of Exeter Visual Impact Wickens
Another great year for LFS; well done to you all - students, staff and governors! It doesn't get any easier, but we’re winning! Around the globe, from the Berlin or Guadalajara Talent Campuses and Rotterdam’s Cinemart to Cannes or Toronto or Busan, LFS Associates are making groundbreaking cinema and television,
and meeting up to renew friendships and collaborations forged in London. Just a few highlights: First features from Tongpong Chaterangkul (I Carried you Home) and Jules Bishop (Borrowed Time) wowed London and Edinburgh, while Ann Hui took three Hong Kong Oscars for A Simple Life. Duncan Jones is at work on a new feature after 2011’s Source Code. Recent Associates from 2010 and ’11 are taking up places in the Cannes Residence scheme and making work for Film London’s Microwave and Creative England’s ifeatures. Henry Darke became the school’s fourth Screen International ‘Star of Tomorrow’. And these are just a few of the directors. There are many hundreds of other stories, and stories of cinematographers, editors, producers, sound designers doing extraordinary work around the world. In 2012 the LFS community lost some important members, amongst them Fernando Lopes, leading director of the Portuguese New Cinema, Dai
respectively.
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In 2013 the school will be calling out to its Associates to help fund scholarships, support the capital campaign for the new school at the Barbican, to mentor new graduates and to come to the school, show work and inspire careers. It’s a rich creative environment for the new MA filmmakers and screenwriters coming in – and it’s also a global community of artists, craftspeople and collaborators with a global sense of what film can do. Help us fulfill the ambition to make the community and its work ever stronger. Thanks to our many friends and industry partners. They make these careers happen, inspire great events and support vital teaching. Aristotelis Maragkos’s graduation film BEATITUDES THE LONDON FILM SCHOOL 24 SHELTON STREET LONDON WC2H 9UB U.K. TELEPHONE: +44 (0)20 7836 9642 EMAIL: info@lfs.org.uk
lfs.org.uk