London East Asian Film Festival
They’re billing this as the “0th edition” of the festival, which is to say it doesn’t begin in earnest until 2016. But as a taster, these seven UK premieres are promising: there’s Korean action comedy Veteran (plus a Q&A with director Ryoo Seung-wan); Hong Kong actioner SPL2: A Time For Consequences; and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s afterlife-crossing melodrama Journey To The Shore, which won best director at Cannes this year. For something really different, try Lynchian Filipino horror Violator.
Odeon Leicester Square & Covent Garden, WC2; Odeon Panton Street, SW1, Fri to 25 Oct
Asian Dub Foundation Score THX 1138, Nationwide
It’s usually silent movies that get the contemporary re-score treatment, but Asian Dub Foundation take the harder approach of putting music to a movie that already has dialogue and a rich soundscape. As this progressive troupe showed with their La Haine and Battle Of Algiers projects, they’re careful to complement what’s already there. And they know how to pick a good movie. George Lucas’s 1971 debut is a fine choice: an austere future dystopia with plenty of blank sonic spaces to fill, and a movie whose prescience and un-Star Wars-like visual artistry looks even better with hindsight. The band accompany the movie live at nine UK venues in the coming weeks, starting in Edinburgh tonight.
BFI Love, Nationwide
Love is all around over the next three months as the BFI mounts a nationwide celebration of an abstract quality nobody could object to – except on the grounds of bleedin’ obviousness perhaps. In reality, that translates into some great events: 1940s-style tea dances for Brief Encounter; The Princess Bride in a Welsh castle; Wings Of Desire in a 12th-century Glasgow abbey; My Beautiful Laundrette in, er, a laundrette. London’s BFI Southbank is the epicentre of the season, with movies divided into three categories (essentially love stories, romcoms and fatal atractions) with extended runs of Dr Zhivago, Brief Encounter and True Romance, and events and discussions taking in Stephen Frears, Gurinder Chadha, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and, of course, Mike “Four Weddings” Newell.
Africa In Motion, Edinburgh & Glasgow
There are views of all corners of the continent here, but true to the festival’s title there’s also an encouraging progression of film-making talent on display. From the past you’ve got greats like Senegal’s Ousmane Sembène (a new documentary on him and a restored version of his 1966 debut Black Girl) and Djibril Diop Mambéty. From the present, Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza makes a name for himself with the experimental Things Of The Aimless Wanderer, rising star Sara Blecher presents her two latest films reflecting modern, messy South African life, and The Boda Boda Thieves is a Kampala-set reinterpretation of The Bicycle Thieves. Other highlights include family storytelling events and a pop-up cafe providing African food and African TV programmes.
