London Film Festival Head Kristy Matheson On Landing ‘Blitz’, Launching Video Games Strand & Embracing Experimental Works: “We Have A Very Cinema-Literate Audience”
With titles like Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire and Mati Diop’s Dahomey, London Film Festival head Kristy Matheson, in her second year at the helm, inches further toward what appears to be an interesting strategic shift at the LFF: a full-scale embrace of the avant-garde.
Alongside Hunt-Ehrlich and Diop, experimental and deeply contemporary filmmakers such as Wang Bing, Payal Kapadia and Tsai Ming-liang feature throughout this year’s LFF lineup. The experimental mix-up, Matheson told us ahead of Wednesday night’s opening, is thanks to the enthusiasm of London’s “very cinema-literate audience.”
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“There are so many amazing cinemas all across the city screening great work all year round. And that’s our core audience,” she said.
Opening the festival on Wednesday is Blitz, the latest feature-length project from Turner Prize- and Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen. Other headline titles set for the festival include Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Daniel Craig; Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Endurance; and The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s biopic on young Donald Trump.
Below, Matheson digs into this year’s program, landing McQueen’s Blitz, the festival’s much-talked-about online ticketing system, and the inclusion of video games in the LFF programme.
The event runs October 9-20.
DEADLINE: Kristy, when do you lock your program?
KRISTY MATHESON: We locked the program in August, which allowed us to come out of summer and see several films heading into the fall. Without stressing out all of our colleagues in production, we try as much as we can to take the program right up to the wire of our launch.
DEADLINE: Big opening-night premiere: Steve McQueen’s Blitz. How did you land that?
MATHESON: Steve McQueen and the LFF have enjoyed a long association. For us, we just love the opportunity to continue that ongoing relationship and for audiences to follow a director’s work. Blitz was a key title for us from the beginning of the programming process. It was a film we were desperate to see. I couldn’t think of a better way to open the festival. It’s such a London film and it tells such an important story, not just about a period in history but really about the city itself and the citizenship of that city. It’s a real tour de force in terms of filmmaking and this will be a big moment to really celebrate excellence in British cinema.
DEADLINE: What’s it been like working with Steve on the premiere? I know he’s a very engaged filmmaker.
MATHESON: We’ve worked with him on openings before. And when you’re working with a filmmaker who is such an artist and has such authorial control over their work, it’s just about making sure we’re presenting the film in a way that the film team can get behind. This is a dream opening night for us. And to have Steve McQueen and his whole film team here with us, it’s going to be very special.
DEADLINE: Six out of 11 films in competition are directed by women. Was that a conscious decision?
MATHESON: We certainly think about the competition very carefully in terms of how we curate it. I like to think that if you only saw the official competition you would get a really condensed distillation of the whole program. We want to highlight different types of filmmaking be that from different regions of the world or different filmmaking styles alongside UK and Irish work. We aim to show audiences the breadth of cinema this year. There is a lot of very strong filmmaking from female and non-binary directors this year, so it feels very fitting for it to be in competition.
DEADLINE: It’s clear what audience the gala screenings are geared toward. But what is the audience for the competition titles?
MATHESON: As I said, we’re really trying to give people the breadth of cinema. Obviously, there may be some people who might say, I love documentaries, so I’m going to see the documentary in competition. But we have a very cinema-literate audience here in London. There are so many amazing cinemas all across the city screening great work all year round. And that’s our core audience. We have a terrific audience here at BFI Southbank who are consuming lots and lots of different types of cinema. We have a very strong membership base as well. But I’d also say there are definitely things in program if you’re a casual cinemagoer and just want to drop in.
DEADLINE: I agree. I think the BFI has a very engaged audience. I saw Eraserhead at Southbank a few weeks back, and the cinema was packed. Ben Roberts was there too.
MATHESON: Yes! The feedback we get from film teams is that they really love bringing their films here because the audiences are great. They ask good questions, but they’re very adventurous, and they’re hungry to discover new cinema. They know their cinema, which gives us a lot of room to move as programmers. We don’t have to stay in such a narrow band. We can think of cinema quite expansively. It’s a real gift to us as programmers.
DEADLINE: There are a lot of great series at the festival this year like Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer…
MATHESON: Yes, we’re presenting that as a special event because Alfonso will be here with some of his incredible cast to talk about the series. It’s based on a really popular book, but it’s such a dense book to tackle and he’s done it so incredibly well. I think there’s just a lot of meat on the bone here for people to chew on when they see the show. This year we’ve been blessed with a number of terrific series.
DEADLINE: Series are included in the wider programming this year. Will there no longer be a dedicated series strand?
MATHESON: Yeah, so we divide the program up across strands and this year given that all of the series are very different in tone it just programmatically made more sense for us to sort of weave them into the different strands. We thought it would be an easier way for audiences to navigate the festival.
DEADLINE: Rowan has left for the Edinburgh TV festival. Who is heading series programming? Will that be done by you and your team?
MATHESON: Yeah, we’ll continue to program that in-house. I think what’s really great is that all of the terrific programming that Rowan did during her tenure here at the LFF has allowed us to have more conversations and bring series in and it doesn’t feel like series are something that doesn’t have a natural home in the LFF.
DEADLINE: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Endurance will debut at the festival. No one really knows anything about that film. What can you tell us?
MATHESON: It’s really terrific. We were lucky enough to have Nyad at the festival last year and it’s wonderful to have that filmmaking team back at LFF. It’s an incredible documentary in two parts. They take the original footage that Frank Hurley shot during the Shackleton polar expedition. As it were, that footage had been restored by the BFI national archive, so it’s a story of a nice homecoming for the footage. So you have that original Shackleton footage. You also have the story of contemporary polar explorers trying to find the wreckage. The story of the Shackleton is obviously fascinating, and how they survived is really one of the most incredible stories. The fact that this footage survived is remarkable. What’s really wonderful about the film is that you get to spend so much time with all of these different scientists who have different roles. It’s a real love letter to exploration and science.
DEADLINE: LFF has added video games this year. Why?
MATHESON: For us, it’s audience-led. I think people who are interested in screen-based culture aren’t particularly hung up about the form, they just want to see exciting things. They want to see great storytelling that makes them think and feel. Video games are a very natural extension of that. It’s such a beloved art form by millions and millions of people across the world. And it’s a space where really interesting things are happening in terms of storytelling. This year we’re operating what we are calling a free games lounge so people can drop in. I’m sure those who are au fait with gaming will probably have to help other people who might be less au fait with gaming.
DEADLINE: I don’t know if you’re aware but there’s a funny debate online about LFF’s ticketing system. People often post online complaining about being stuck in long online queues and missing out on tickets.
MATHESON: I know it’s very annoying, so I don’t want to further anger people who were stuck in the ticketing queue. The whole team spends a long time thinking and planning the festival, and then that moment the tickets go on sale and you see people responding to the program, and it’s really humbling. Each year we try to make that ticketing experience as seamless as possible, so a lot of work goes into that, but we try to make the ticketing experience as simple as we can.
People are always wanting to talk about the doom and gloom of cinema being dead. And that’s just not what we see here at Southbank every day. It’s not what I see when I go to cinemas in London, and it’s not what I see when the festival is on. So yes, apologies for the long delays in the queue, but it’s really great to know that people love cinema as much as we do.
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