Almost in defiance of the impending gloom of Brexit, London continues to host a plethora of European film events, national film-weeks and a variety of cultural cinematic gatherings, screenings and mini-festivals, sometimes on Embassy premises or in other non-cinema venues. Currently, on one of the capital's smartest streets in merry Marylebone, and more or less opposite the ever-busy  entrance to one of London's film-starriest hostelries, the Chiltern Firehouse, is a most unusual, tiny temple to the seventh art. Curiously disguised as a barber shop, with jaunty red-and-white striped awning is The Gallery of Everything, at the south end of Chiltern Street W1., the earthly abode of the pioneering British arts charity The Museum of Everything.The building is described as London's   first and only commercial space dedicated to non-academic and private art-making.Since 26th March (and until 18th June, 2017) it hosts a double exhibition entitled ACTION,CAMERA! which pairs camera creations by Australian salvagiste Alan Constable (ceramic revisions of lenses) with the first UK showing of joyous movie collages by Bucurest's Ion Barladeanu, whose  colourful cut-outs of "forbidden" stars and probably proscribed foreign movies from the Communist era now seem superbly satiric cinemascoped scenes from the films he was making for himself in his head, juxtaposing political supremos with the likes of Liza Minnelli, Brigitte Bardot, and sundry Bonds.Quite literally discovered after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the despatch of Ceaucescu, these brightly coloured Panavisions are well worth the pilgrimage now. (Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am). But the best time to savour these  cinematic scherzi would be during the weekly season of Iron Curtain Films,lovingly  curated by Robert Schilling,a film lecturer who hails from Hunedoara but is now based in London, who has selected five classic Romanian feature films to accompany the exhibition in ticketed screenings on Tuesdays at 7pm.

The season kicked off, on May 4th with the state-funded  IACOB, a powerful even Biblical tragedy set in a mining community during the 1930s but clearly sardonically commenting on its time of production and premiere,during the late 1980s (it was a candidate at the European Film Awards in 1988 with Dorel Visan nominated as Best Actor in the title role,and IACOB was also nominated for Best Film), with strong performances from an experienced cast and gorgeous photography of snow-swept mountainous villages contrasting with the grimly regimented underworld of the mines.It shows still the assured direction of Mircea Daneliuc.

As thematic aperitif,a horseradish vodka was served (allegedly of bootleg provenance ) which packed a powerful kick itself, somewhat moderated- as the charming galleryistes kindly suggested-by the munching of fresh red apples.Further to complement a scene from the film, tastily-roasted chicken drumsticks were also freely available.An informative introduction to the film by Robert Schilling complimented  this original and literal hors d'oeuvre.

The second film in this captivating season is the 1970 historical epic  MICHAEL THE BRAVE (203 minutes) so the mind boggles (or salivates, if such is possible for a mind) as to what will be served up for that, on 9th May 2017, at 7pm. Any remaining tickets may have to be begged, borrowed, or bought.An original and most welcome addition to the London  film seen.Noroc si Sanatate!

Phillip Bergson                                                              www.gallevery.com

There is another White House, an iconic apartment-house opened in  1936,and now a listed building, in bustling Marylebone, close to Regent's Park in the centre of London, and opposite the site of the Diorama, a fore-runner of cinema, which employed candle-light on huge paintings, with audiences literally moved around a flexible,arena-like space.Adjacent in Albany Street was another celebrated Victorian attraction, the Colosseum, constructed in the  1820s to house "The Panorama of London", the largest painting ever created.

Christina Rossetti was a nearby neighbour and other literary figures who lived in the area whose writings would much later inspire film-makers include Charles Dickens, and  Wilkie Collins who authored the first detective novel, while the two homes of the most famous fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, are a short walk away in opposite directions, his traditional Baker Street abode to the west, the newer haunt of BBC TV's latest incumbent in the role Benedict Cumberbatch to the east.Constant Lambert, who composed some film music,lived in Albany Street.The building itself is  of  striking design, in the shape of the crosses of St Andrew and St George as super-imposed on each other, and so forming the Union Jack, which  saved it  from being blitzed during the Second World War when Luftwaffe  pilots apparently used it as a compass.

The serviced apartments with restaurant and the latest  luxury facilities -  the juvenile Jane Asher recalls swimming in its indoor pool in the 1950s- became a magnet for celebrities. Trevor Howard told me that he  set out from his flat for the premiere of Brief Encounter in a cinema down Regent Street that subsequently became a religious hall, realised he had forgotten his cufflinks but was able to go back to retrieve them and make his appearance in time to introduce what became one of the British cinema's  best loved love stories. (That place  is now,I believe,ironically, an upmarket jewellery shop).There was a roof garden and The White House opened what became one of the capital's first smart clubs, for non-residents, to which countless film-makers, musicians and other artistes flocked.Appropriately, the building was acquired by the Rank Organisation in 1972,(probably Britain's largest film-making and film-showing company) when partially transformed into a 4-star hotel,with the proviso that it always retain some private tenants,in a dedicated wing.Gradually residents associated with MI5(demobbed after the war)  gave way to BBC staff (Broadcasting House is a brisk walk down Great Portland Street) and press junkets for Gandhi  and other film releases. A neighbour on the first floor with his own grand piano en suite was the musical prodigy Shura Cherkassky, who is said to have had an affair with Greta Garbo, coming perilously close to marrying her.

Another  face famous from films belonged to Kenneth Williams, star of the Carry On series of British screen comedies, who actually lived opposite the White House but often hailed taxis from its imposing front door.His shade may still frequent the garden for smokers added on the corner onto which his own mansion flat looked.The hotel passed through various international hands until Spain's leading hotel company,Sol Melia, acquired it in the late 1990s, and transformed it during  a  year-long, 30-million pound refurbishment. One of its recent innovations, replacing part of a former shopping arcade, is an elegant showplace for contemporary artists , run by two elegant ladies, and accordingly called Le  Dame Art Gallery. (They also curate art-works throughout the 8 floors of the Melia White House and striking installations outside the rear entrance,and an annual Art Fair that fills rooms for a few days  throughout the first floor.Beneath this now permanent vitrine for new work,in the Albany Suite, was presented in 2015 The Table of Alliance, a very literally moveable feast, which first in Rome and then in other cities saw performance artist Daniela Papadia bring 36 mixed guests to a dinner eaten on a table covered by a tapestry embroidered with designs corresponding to the human genome. The huge cloth fascinatingly filled the underground hospitality suite and was accompanied by a half-hour documentary The Table of Alliance, directed by Francesco Micciche, son of the celebrated film critic and author Lino Micchiche, screening during the exhibition hours.When I was selected by the New Statesman as a Student Journalist of the Year,for a satiric essay on sex and violence on the screen,entitled  "The Rape of the Cinema" , the prize money bought me one of the first Inter-Rail Cards, and the  re-publishing of my article in the British Embassy's own magazine in Paris (in English, as the editorial introduction underlined,pour nos lecteurs qui sont en mesure d'en aprecier sa verve), with another modest fee, encouraged me to pause in Paris to collect a copy, see a matinee of Fellini-Roma, and take the Simplon-Orient Express overnight to Venice.

After making my way across the Lagoon to the Lido, I found the Press Office of the Venice Film Festival in the ballroom of the Hotel Excelsior and after showing these magazines to a busy but kindly Italian, I was promptly rewarded with a press pass for the entire festival.My tessera was signed by Lino Micciche, for it was the distinguished FIPRESCI member who flourished his ink pen on the cream-coloured card for me.That was the year Cabaret was screened in Venice, because Liza Minnelli refused to return to Cannes, having been badly received in an earlier film premiered on the Croisette. I was only a sixth-former.but my A-level Latin metamorphosed quickly into fluent Italian,and ensured a lasting fondness for the world's first film festival, that became my own first festival to attend.

The next night I almost literally bumped into Charlie Chaplin as he was being wheeled to an open-air screening of City Lights in the Piazza San Marco.So it was quite a moving experience for me  to come home,some years later, after Wardour Street previews, for BBC or other commisions, to find Francesco Micciche busy in the family business as a successful documentary(and feature) director, for  I  have his much-missed now father to thank for encouraging me into the festival circuit and the profession of film criticism. After graduating from Oxford  as a Sunday Times 'New Critic' I would eventually meet Lino at many festivals and rendez-vous of FIPRESCI, of which I became a member myself.

Last month another vernissage was well-fuelled by Le Dame's usual prosecco  for the first UK solo show of American artist Brian Huber,  who hails from New Orleans (further justifying  the reference to Tennessee Williams in the title to this piece), studied Art and Architecture at the University of Louisiana,   worked for television studios and corporations in San Francisco, and lived on a houseboat in Sausalito.A short film shows him creating his most  attractive abstract landscapes, inspired by rhythms of jazz and blues (and some very vivid blue colours),sculpting giant sheets of acrylic paint into Braided and Circle Back designs. The exhibition continues until  3rd June 2017 and is well worth the walk down Memory Lane.

Phillip Bergson                                  www.ledameartgallery.com                               www.melia.com

In characteristic contrast to the ever-earlier Launch of the BFI London Film Festival, held (on 31st August 2017) in the terror-attack capital's largest cinema, which was awash with sponsor's mineral waters and organic chocolate bars as countless clips and trailers unreeled after breakfast, the Raindance Film Festival hosted a week of press previews in one of the tinest but toniest of screening rooms in the West End, in the lower floor of the Virgin lounge on the Haymarket, where there is a mini-cinema modelled on the First Class cabin of a Bransonian aircraft, complete with cute portholes along its right wall through which Virgina planes can be spied cruising through blue skies. The comfy armchairs afford good sight-lines even for sub-titled films and at the back is a hospitality bar stocked with hot and cold drinks and at Raindance's matinees healthy biscuits and fruit.Projection is fine as is the sound system-- and the focus is sharp as was evident for the preview of In Another Life,  world premiering and competing in the UK Feature section, with its eloquent, crisp black-and-white photography.I checked in for  four of the five pre-festival press screenings and couldn't have liked them more.

Not only throwing its nets far and wide for independently-produced features, shorts and documentaries, Raindance has succeeded in making itself one of the most audience-friendly of the host of festivals that crowd the calendar now...using central venues, with nearby social hubs (such as the excellent Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue, and encouraging film-makers to host receptions in adjacent galleries, hotels and easily-accessible venues).While not obsessing with red carpet arrivals, Raindance is always graced by notable  cineastes from all sides of the camera (Joanna Lumley was a jolly juror in 2016).

Indeed unlike another extravaganza soon to unspool on the other side of the Thames, it announced its jury members a fortnight ago- to include Jack O'Connell, Sean Bean, Christopher Eccleston, Celia Imrie, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Ewen Bremner, and Rachael Portman  - not exactly the Usual Suspects, but a very interesting clutch of cinema talents.  Josh Hartnett has already participated in a conference ahead of the opening film in which he stars, OH LUCY! (made in Japan) and though the 12 days of screenings have been diverted from the VUE Piccadilly to its renovated  bigger brother at the further end of Leicester Square, it's chocks away for a stimulating event.

www.raindance.org

PHILLIP BERGSON

One of the most remarkable British directing debuts of this or any year, In Another Life is a swiftly-paced,convincingly acted and utterly involving recreation of the struggles of a handful of refugees trapped in the "Jungle" camp near Calais. Directed with flair,finesse and dignity by Jason Wingarde it has credibly woven from clearly personal,true stories a fictionalised story of flight and pursuit and optimism, blending a multi-racial cast of highly capable professional actors with authentic or authentic-looking recreations of scenes and activities among the desperate men, women and children whose lives reached a standstill almost within sight of the cliffs of Dover, yet trapped on French soil, and often tricked by their own  fellow-travellers and people-smugglers.Excellent black-and-white photography never sentimentalises their plight, and the mix of tongues and accents(with most dialogues in English) ensures that the daily dramas,set-backs, and eventual tragedies are easy to understand.The sharp-eyed will spot a face from one of the UK's most popular TV soap operas (Emmerdale).

2017  84  minutes  IN ANOTHER LIFE enjoys a sold-out World Premiere at  20.30 on Tuesday 26th September

There is a further screening on Thursday 28th September at 3.30pm,also in the VUE West End Cinema, in London

PHILLIP BERGSON                                                            www.raindance.co.uk

Though based in High Wycombe ,the Third Edition of the highly independent Fisheye Film Festival ventures to nearby Beaconsfield tonight with a special screening inside the cinema of the famed National Film and Television School (recently complimented in the Hollywood Reporter as the top international film school) of the remarkable and multi-award-winning strange romance God's Own Country.

The film has just won another two top awards, at the Dinard Festival of British Films and will be screened at 7pm , followed by a presentation, moderated by moi, with the French-born producer of this Yorkshire-set rural drama, Manon Ardisson. Some tickets remaining at £10 may be available from 6.30pm, in the NFTS.

The  festival continues to 22nd October in various venues around the Chiltern lines, with the Awards Ceremony (for submitted shorts) at 6pm on Saturday 21st October 2017, in the Cineworld in High Wycombe.

www.fisheyefilmfest.uk

Phillip Bergson

It could hardly be a more topical time, given the international brouhahas in the media about Soviet cyberhacking and the alleged,well-funded if unsubtle  interference of Putinistas in elections around the globe for a second Russian Filmweek to be unleashed on an unsuspecting London.....the Brexiting metropolis whose only daily newspapers are now owned by a Russian plutocrat who also happens to run  the only full-time local TV  channel(which,incidentally, currently programmes consistently  the best of British and other classic feature films morning,noon and night,having  access not only to  to the  back catalogues of the legendary Ealing Studios but also,it seems, Studio Canal's entire English-language feature acquisitions).There has been a long tradition of screening and appreciating film productions from Russia in the British capital.The first film societies here premiered Battleship  Potemkin and other silent classics,and all through the Cold War years masterpieces of the 1940s and 1950s and festival award-winners from Moscow and the Republics were staple fare in art-house cinemas across the city.The early London Film Festivals regularly launched notable features, and the National Film Theatre often presented seasons of Russian cinema with carefully selected (and supervised) cineastes in attendance,and sundry film critics were often feted at vodka-fuelled receptions in the Embassy near Notting Hill Gate. British Council tours often shepherded local  film-makers and journalists to film-weeks across all the Russias.Before the Fall of the Wall, yours truly organised the first Soviet Film Week in Oxford, attended by the legendary Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis, star of Solaris, and as a People's Hero permitted to travel briefly abroad (without any cash at all) with a fellow director, in those Former Happy Times when the Baltics belonged to the Soviet Empire.

With the change of political regimes,and of the name of the country, Russian film-making has had to battle with market forces and is less able to rely on state financing, but nevertheless new generations of film-makers have found fame at foreign festivals and increasingly won paying audiences domestically as well as abroad.For some years there was a boutique annual survey of new Russian films presented each winter in an art-house miniplex close to Piccadilly Circus, which was perked up last year by Filip Perkon and relaunched as a new event, with well-attended premieres, parties and events around the West End and even out of town,and now his 2nd Russian Filmweek has spectacularly mushroomed from five to 19 venues,and brings some 70  films and 100 professional guests from Russia  to England from 19th to 26th November 2017, with a host of new sponsors(including a sparkling blue wine from France),screenings,parties,panels,gala dinners,awards,and exhibitions.

Phillip Bergson                                              www.russianfilmweek.org

More than a visual visiting card for a young or debuting film-maker, the short film should be a work of cinematic art in its own right, comparable to the stories of Guy de Maupassant or the exquisite etudes of Frederic Chopin. It is fascinating to view the graduation pieces or early narrative films by established directors, where often their look, style, techniques, and continuing concerns can be discerned in embryo form, and would be developed in future feature films.The film festivals are the natural home and haven for the short film, but in Great Britain shorts often were screened in commercial cinemas,coupled to a major studio picture (and until the abolition of the Eady Levy benefited from box-office commissions intended to encourage the production of films locally). At major festivals a competing new short usually preceded an official competing feature, and had its own awards, but probably because even professional audiences used it as a smoking break, or were annoyed at being obliged to wait in the foyer until it was over, both the Berlinale and Cannes not so very long ago relegated all their officially- selected shorts into one or at most two curated programmes, invariably screened on the Riviera on the hottest afternoon of the year, with the huge auditorium almost empty escape  for  the film-makers, their mother, and the hardiest of festival programmers. Few new short-makers will share the joys of a large and enthusiastic festival crowd such as when the Berlinale screened The Waving Girl (Das Winkende Maedchen,if you will forgive my German, which I never formally learned), a brilliant parody of screen credits to Ravel's Bolero,which unanimously won the Golden Bear for Best Short  and prompted a delightful sequel The Return of the Waving Girl (I am not even going to try to remember its original title).Recently Cannes has estaStblished the Short Film Corner,in the bowels of the Film Market, and though its screening rooms are tiny, its catalogues are excellent, and there are many panels, and networking events for the short film-makers and their enthusiasts and selectors.There are still notable international as well as local or thematic festivals that champion the short, from Clermont-Ferrand,in chillier February to Krakow, Leipzig, Annecy (for animated shorts,of course),while the European Film Academy has for the last decade or so- with the help of some island beverage as sponsor- highlighted short films in designated annual  events, ensuring that their prizes qualify them for eventual BAFTA or Hollywood 'Oscar' qualifications.

Yours truly has a screenplay credit on one of the last UK shorts that, thanks to its accompanying feature, saw over 450 35mm copies circulate in cinemas across the  country, while as a Jury Member in Bruxelles I was among those giving to Jaco Van Dormael his first prize, which in those far-off January days,was worth more than a fistful of Belgian francs, for his graduation film E pericoloso sporgersi, so the short film is something that I think is important. As a Jury Member at Thessaloniki, which was competitive originally (before Melina Mercouri cancelled it and others later  gave it new life and dates) only for short films, which could run as much as 55 minutes, we often had 90 minutes of films to view before each international feature premiere. Currently most film festivals impose a limit of 20 minutes for competing shorts,which rather restricted the after-life of one of the most professionally-produced selections of the 2014 Cannes Corner,The Enchanted Forest directed by Romanian Andrei Enoiu (who has subsequently gone on to become one of the executive producers of the engaging documentary We are Many,currently on release).With the mushrooming of film festivals around the globe, young hopefuls stream, submit, send DVDs far and wide,seeking what is the right of any good film, a screening before an audience in the dark.

The Siberian-born, British-resident film-maker Dimitry Kalinin swapped a career in banking for study at what used to be called the London International Film School, and with his first film, made there on a tiny budget with stringent production restrictions, HOLY SMOKE demonstrated an unusual understanding of the dictates of the short.This delightful skit runs less than four minutes, and all its principals are professional actors,whilst in the crowd scenes - I declare an interest- your correspondent makes an apparition tres fugace, with some other experienced extras from across Europe.Seeing Kalinin on the set- an actual church in London's Maida Vale-he displayed an unusual confidence, yet was able to communicate easily with crew as well as cast.The popular English comic actor Nickolas Grace pertly plays a visiting Bishop, with Timothy Walker as the vicar chastising a cheeky altar boy, who wreaks revenge by slipping something alien into the incense.The film almost brought the house down when shown in the huge-and fully filled- auditorium deep in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square at a LIFF pre-graduation show, and has just been screened at the Studio 35 Comedy Film Festival in Columbus,Ohio.

Confirming that his first short was no flash in the pan, his utterly different second short OVER- in just over nine minutes-is a gift for international film festivals as it contains no spoken dialogue at all.It is handsomely photographed in lush Irish landscapes (not far from Cork, which coincidentally was the other famed festival for shorts,like Thessaloniki,presenting them in tandem with random international feature premieres for decades- though I do not  think Rita Hayworth ever attended, though she did make it to Greece, and was then invited to Oxford where her non-attendance was legendary, but that is for another article).There is a most atmospheric original score(by Andrew G.Vassall) and the film evokes effortlessly an infinite longing and regret and perhaps reconciliation.A George Clooneyesque solitary painter in his rural cottage is visited nocturnally by a muscular motorcyclist and we realise this a ghostly visiteur du soir following a  crash. This has just been screened at the curiously-named Schwein Gehabt Film Festival (I think it takes place in a former slaughter-house, in Karlsruhe- sounds very Vonnegut) as well as at the Art Color Digital Cinema International Film Festival(in Montreal) and is now cruising the festival circuit.

Kalinin's latest short is SHINGLE, at nearly 13 minutes, also with a death, and a doctor, his patient and his lover caught in a web of complicated relations on and near a beach on the South Coast of England. It is exhilarating to see a directing talent develop and it is not meant as reproach to the short film as a format to say the next step has to be a medium or full-length feature for Dimitry Kalinin,simply because outside the festivals there a few opportunities to view such fine work. For a time Channel 4 in Britain and ARTE across Europe would screen short films, late at night or as part of thematic evenings, and now the young and hip will say there is YouTube and Apps and ups and mobile phone exposure, but a  well-made short film deserves to be seen on a larger screen and with a communal audience,just like a feature (call me old-fashioned).Disney and Pixar occasionally release short subjects into the cinemas,  though often they seem like cynical commercial exercises.But do not forget, as Cannes 2015 spectacularly reminded us with its LUMIERE screening , the origin of cinema was the short, without dialogue, which captivated,moved, and entertained audiences around the world.

Phillip Bergson

The Polish Film Spring came early into London this year, as Kinoteka unreeled, for the 15th time, from 17th March to 5th April, 2017,in various venues across the capital, presenting new and classic features and shorts, documentaries and animations, with workshops,talks,master-classes, art, music, a dinner,and a plethora of tasty Polish cakes.

It is quite literally a rich programme, capably curated as ever by movie-mad Marlena Lukasiak, and her old and new colleagues in the Polish Cultural Institute in Londyn.This year the Opening Gala relocated to what for me is now London's loveliest cinema,the Regent Street, historic site of the Freres Lumiere's first presentation of film on this side of the Channel in 1896, in  a theatre which was part  of the Royal Polytechnic Institution. After the Second World War it became a celebrated art-house, the Cameo-Poly, and subsequently a Classic Cinema (where I recall seeing Sidney Lumet's The Seagull when very small), until it again became a teaching space for 30 years.As the Poly was translated into the University of Westminster, the venue was gradually transformed, thanks to individual benefactors and sundry Funds and Trusts, with the 1936 Compton Organ refurbished,and the Art Deco interior splendidly renovated for its re-opening as a full-time cinema in May 2015.It is now a congenial home for classic double-bills,marvellous musical matinees (for its recent screening-I think as a 35mm print- of Kismet,I had to join a queue that snaked along Regent Street- how long is it since you saw an actual line at any box-office, in our days of Apps and booking online?),and frequent foreign film weeks and festivals,It was the perfect venue for the UK premiere of Andrzej Wajda's final film, his autumnal envoi Afterimage (Powidoki),a moving tribute to the avant-garde painter Wladislaw Strzemynski, severely handicapped after being wounded in the Great War.He was born in Minsk,and a student in St Petersburg and colleague of Malevich and Chagall, but  film focusses on his last years, as a victim of Stalinist policies,his abstract art vilified in the 1950s era of social realism,and himself hounded from the Art Institute he founded,humiliated and even prevented from painting, in penury and ill.It is a heroic performance by Boguslaw Linda who now has more than a look of Wajda himself (who completed the film with his customary vigour, clearly himself remembering the political regimes under which he often himself suffered, but sadly he died less than a month after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, though at 90 was still planning a further film).The film is handsomely shot by Pawel Edelman ,the cinematographer who  worked with Wajda several times and was Oscar-nominated for Polanski's The Pianist, and aptly features music by Andrzej Panufnik, who had to pursue his career outside a Poland dominated by Stalin's  strictures. Forced to teach in secret to his devoted students, Strzemynski's theories on art were posthumously published and the film appropriately concludes with a blaze of colour from some surviving canvases.

A lively, informal Reception followed  the screening in the cinema's own cafe-bar,where guests included the Quay Brothers (they really are twins, I never know which one is which) who have again made a  characteristic festival logo/trailer, and the bright star of Polish stage and screens big and small, Maciej Stuhr, who features in the selections Planet Single, the successful romantic comedy directed by Slovenia's Mitja Okorn, and the 1950s music- drama Eccentrics, The Sunny Side of the Street(showing on Sunday 26th March, 7.30pm,Regent Street Cinema).There was an  abundance of sumptuous cakes from co-sponsor The Polish Bakery, and in the evident  absence of wodka,  vouchers for 20% discounts throughout the Festival in the DRY MARTINI Bar, a short walk away in the historic hotel partner, the Melia White House, the Art Deco  hotel-cum-apartment house on to which Kenneth Williams's  windows looked for many years.

Kinoteka continues with screenings of eight great films by Wajda, from early classics such as Ashes and Diamonds to Man of Marble,more or less smuggled into the  Cannes Film Festival  where the film caused a sensation in 1977, winning the FIPRESCI Prize ,and its follow-up Man of Iron, which also premiered at a later Cannes (and incidentally initiated my regular reportage on Polish cinema on the BBC Polish Service, as I was covering the festival for domestic BBC outlets and subsequently interviewed Wajda many times, though we mostly spoke French together, off-microphone.I later saw his own exquisite art works exhibited during the European Film Festival in Lecce, evidently inspired by Japan,with delicate drawings and exquisite colours.The last time I saw and spoke with  the master film-maker was at the inauguration(with retractable roof)  of the marvellous Shakespeare Theatre in Gdansk, a project he had long championed).There are also newer films, documentaries, and other events in many venues . Kinoteka returns to the Barbican for its spectacular close, pairing the live music of British Sea Power with animated shorts by such internationally-awarded talents as Piotr Dumala (Wednesday 5th April, 8pm, Barbican Hall). Polish films have been performing well in their own country as well as collecting awards around the world and Kinoteka always assembles a striking showcase of the classic and contemporary It is a timely addition for Brexiteers and Polonists alike.Na razie!

Phillip Bergson

For full programme and ticket details see www.kinoteka.org.uk   For wodka martinis , melia.white.house@melia.com

Following a string of contemporary and classic Polish film screenings in a variety of venues across London, the 15th  Kinoteka came to a spectacular close in the labyrinthine Barbican Centre (on Wednesday  5th April, 2017).This annual Polish Film Festival always creates something original,besides the usual programmes of features and documentaries, workshops and presentations-  another  on-screen logo by the local Quay Brothers, and this year Kinoteka  commissioned new scores to be performed live on the stage of the large Barbican Hall by the indierock band British Sea Power to accompany an eclectic selection of Polish classic animated shorts, ranging in date of production from 1932 to 1983. The visual eccentricities of films made under the watchful eyes of communist censors partnered well with the insistent rythms of the six-strong group of modern musicians who drew a capacity crowd to the large venue.Highlights onscreen were The School,made in 1958 by Walerian Borowczyk, later famed for his colourful  erotic features (and a jolly Jury Member at the Oxford International Film Festival where a different kind of censorship prevented the complete Caligula from  competing as film surprise in primo mondiale,though W.B.and fellow juror Lina Wertmuller had privately seen it in Rome and for a time threatened to prize it-- even though  the representative of Customs and Excise, or some such entity, who had viewed it with the then Secretary of the British Board of Censors James Ferman, threatened to burn the print due to be sent by Bob Guccione from New York,  since he believed it contained 9 minutes and 28 seconds of obscenity, within the meaning of the Act, which could not be removed when the 35mm print would reach Heathrow airport en route for its Saturday night premiere at the largest theatre in Oxford),and Black Riding Hood,made in 1983 by Piotr Dumala.a very dark version of the traditional fairytale.From the charming stop-frame animation of the oldest film The Lion and the Fly (1932) by Ladislav Starevich to the repetitive trickery of Tango (1980, Zbyniew Rybczynski) in which 20  photographed figures are made to pirouette in and out of a modest domestic room, the new live musical soundtracks made a fascinating counterpoint to the visual  techniques of shorts with, for the most part  no spoken dialogues, or  an occasional semi-human sound. The 90-odd minute show was enthusiastically received, as was, for the fortunate invitees, an elegant after-party in an adjacent Barbican salon, lavishly decorated by atractive posters of Poland, with the traditionally tasty birthday cake (The Polish Bakery happily still a sponsor) and, in the absence of any stock of wodka, a lively delegation from festival hotel partner The Melia White House, with discount vouchers for its  Dry Martini Bar.Even the canapes seemed to be nouvelle elaborations of traditional Polish cuisine.

Phillip Bergson

www.barbican.org.uk

Not only the not-so-very United Kingdom is facing crises of identity and culture-clashes currently, in the months apres-BREXIT and avant the various elections looming across Europe, but the cinema itself seems to be going through spasms of schizophrenia, as evidenced by the fiasco of the Academy Awards announcement of Best Picture (unwittingly split between a pastiche Hollywood musical and a very diverse coming-of age drama set in Miami) and the continuing oscillations for  box-office-hits between costly remakes--even of cartoons!--and ever-sillier franchise epics, and tenderer independent pictures which seem hardly to be released but to escape and somehow limp around the festival circuit and, succoured by  critical acclaim, occasionally sneak onto an actual cinema screen somehow, somewhere.But that is the ever-present conflict between an art and an industry.Sir David Lean called film the best near-art form of the 20th century, and who was it who when asked what he thought of the British Film Industry, said that would be a good idea?

As Cannes officially embraces a VR entry, at least in short form, for the first time in the Official Selection, and everywhere young cineastes are not only viewing but making films on mobil phones, I want to raise the flag for the well-made film screened in a well-designed cinema.Film London has lately hosted a couple of Exhibitors' Breakfasts to showcase a host of local-and some national-organisations booking and promoting films on all kind of screens and recently selected two marvellous new venues,the Everyman Muswell Hill which has renovated the legendary Art Deco Odeon, retaining and restoring its main auditorium,complete with balcony or circle area, while also inserting a couple of smaller luxury halls, a well-run bar and cafe area and in warmer weather a large terrace, adjacent to many shops,buses and life in general in this leafy northern suburb of the capital. The other in the heart of the Huguenot East  End and fringing the City of London is the Curzon Aldgate, a  five-screen new-build art-house complex where in spite of the few number of seats individually screens are large,dimensions are generous, and there is the most enormous foyer, currently fitted out with fashionably retro "found" decor, fotos, books and magazines and doubling as an attractive cafe and bar with more than drinks served day and apparently night. It is close to an Underground station (Aldgate East,in which there is currently no signage to the cinema so check your exit carefully or you''ll end up kilometres away as I did!) and nestles in a pedestrian enclave of offices and eateries.If it introduces a Happy Hour for film tickets,I would happily trek there to see anything.

Less recently the Film Distributors' Association launched day-long previews of usually three new features, occasionally with a guest attendee for a Q and A selon arrivage (Ken Loach and the I.Daniel Blake team literally dropped in on their way to its official post-Cannes UK premiere last year) and these are useful catch-ups for invited press,media,and critics. They tend to be more mainstream, about-to-be-released features but lately I have managed to catch some top-quality new British productions in screening conditions slightly superior to some of the private preview theatres, as these movie marathons now unreel in the Vue, Piccadilly, a five-screen miniplex in the very heart of the West End,and although auditoria range in seating capacity from much less than a hundred to slightly over 200, each screen is large and sightlines are good, as are projection and sound.

The opulent spectacle of VICEROY'S HOUSE did not look out of place on such a screen, though this intelligent, well-cast and -performed  recreation of our Imperial "brexit" from India does not seem to have stayed the course on release,at least in what are left of the British Isles so far.Hugh Bonneville makes a dignified Mountbatten with Gillian Anderson excellent as his wife (though her alleged amour with Nehru  seems to have been airbrushed out of the script) and there is a rich cast  of historic cameos in sumptuous settings, with a romantic cross-caste sub-plot that does not deserve some of the criticisms it generated.

Let me also bring to  your attention THE LOST CITY OF Z,a fascinating Fitzcarraldo-like epic of the flawed British explorer Percy Fawcett(expertly impersonated by Charlie Hunnam with Tom Holland as his anarchic son) and a fascinating true-life  memoir of the occupation by the Nazis of Jersey ANOTHER MOTHER'S SON immaculately played by Jenny Seagrove, John Hannah and erstwhile pop star Ronan Keating; a capable contemporary detective thriller CITY OF TINY LIGHTS starring Star Wars "Rogue" Riz Ahmed as an Anglo-Pakistani gumshoe; the literary flash-back drama THE SENSE OF AN ENDING with Jim Broadbent at his least avuncular and Charlotte Rampling at her most enigmatic; and best of all,a  delightful Dunkirk-era spoof(though also evidently inspired by a real-life story of a wartime script girl THEIR FINEST  which also plays to the best strengths of British cinema, recreating the past -- especially that of the Second World War,= with convincing decor and skilled playing for a large and recognisable cast,  but with humour, wit and warmth. More on each of these anon.

PHILLIP BERGSON

www.launchingfilms.com

Almost in defiance of the impending gloom of Brexit, London continues to host a plethora of European film events, national film-weeks and a variety of cultural cinematic gatherings, screenings and mini-festivals, sometimes on Embassy premises or in other non-cinema venues. Currently, on one of the capital's smartest streets in merry Marylebone, and more or less opposite the ever-busy  entrance to one of London's film-starriest hostelries, the Chiltern Firehouse, is a most unusual, tiny temple to the seventh art. Curiously disguised as a barber shop, with jaunty red-and-white striped awning is The Gallery of Everything, at the south end of Chiltern Street W1., the earthly abode of the pioneering British arts charity The Museum of Everything.The building is described as London's   first and only commercial space dedicated to non-academic and private art-making.Since 26th March (and until 18th June, 2017) it hosts a double exhibition entitled ACTION,CAMERA! which pairs camera creations by Australian salvagiste Alan Constable (ceramic revisions of lenses) with the first UK showing of joyous movie collages by Bucurest's Ion Barladeanu, whose  colourful cut-outs of "forbidden" stars and probably proscribed foreign movies from the Communist era now seem superbly satiric cinemascoped scenes from the films he was making for himself in his head, juxtaposing political supremos with the likes of Liza Minnelli, Brigitte Bardot, and sundry Bonds.Quite literally discovered after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the despatch of Ceaucescu, these brightly coloured Panavisions are well worth the pilgrimage now. (Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am). But the best time to savour these  cinematic scherzi would be during the weekly season of Iron Curtain Films,lovingly  curated by Robert Schilling,a film lecturer who hails from Hunedoara but is now based in London, who has selected five classic Romanian feature films to accompany the exhibition in ticketed screenings on Tuesdays at 7pm.

The season kicked off, on May 4th with the state-funded  IACOB, a powerful even Biblical tragedy set in a mining community during the 1930s but clearly sardonically commenting on its time of production and premiere,during the late 1980s (it was a candidate at the European Film Awards in 1988 with Dorel Visan nominated as Best Actor in the title role,and IACOB was also nominated for Best Film), with strong performances from an experienced cast and gorgeous photography of snow-swept mountainous villages contrasting with the grimly regimented underworld of the mines.It shows still the assured direction of Mircea Daneliuc.

As thematic aperitif,a horseradish vodka was served (allegedly of bootleg provenance ) which packed a powerful kick itself, somewhat moderated- as the charming galleryistes kindly suggested-by the munching of fresh red apples.Further to complement a scene from the film, tastily-roasted chicken drumsticks were also freely available.An informative introduction to the film by Robert Schilling complimented  this original and literal hors d'oeuvre.

The second film in this captivating season is the 1970 historical epic  MICHAEL THE BRAVE (203 minutes) so the mind boggles (or salivates, if such is possible for a mind) as to what will be served up for that, on 9th May 2017, at 7pm. Any remaining tickets may have to be begged, borrowed, or bought.An original and most welcome addition to the London  film seen.Noroc si Sanatate!

Phillip Bergson                                                              www.gallevery.com

There is another White House, an iconic apartment-house opened in  1936,and now a listed building, in bustling Marylebone, close to Regent's Park in the centre of London, and opposite the site of the Diorama, a fore-runner of cinema, which employed candle-light on huge paintings, with audiences literally moved around a flexible,arena-like space.Adjacent in Albany Street was another celebrated Victorian attraction, the Colosseum, constructed in the  1820s to house "The Panorama of London", the largest painting ever created.

Christina Rossetti was a nearby neighbour and other literary figures who lived in the area whose writings would much later inspire film-makers include Charles Dickens, and  Wilkie Collins who authored the first detective novel, while the two homes of the most famous fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, are a short walk away in opposite directions, his traditional Baker Street abode to the west, the newer haunt of BBC TV's latest incumbent in the role Benedict Cumberbatch to the east.Constant Lambert, who composed some film music,lived in Albany Street.The building itself is  of  striking design, in the shape of the crosses of St Andrew and St George as super-imposed on each other, and so forming the Union Jack, which  saved it  from being blitzed during the Second World War when Luftwaffe  pilots apparently used it as a compass.

The serviced apartments with restaurant and the latest  luxury facilities -  the juvenile Jane Asher recalls swimming in its indoor pool in the 1950s- became a magnet for celebrities. Trevor Howard told me that he  set out from his flat for the premiere of Brief Encounter in a cinema down Regent Street that subsequently became a religious hall, realised he had forgotten his cufflinks but was able to go back to retrieve them and make his appearance in time to introduce what became one of the British cinema's  best loved love stories. (That place  is now,I believe,ironically, an upmarket jewellery shop).There was a roof garden and The White House opened what became one of the capital's first smart clubs, for non-residents, to which countless film-makers, musicians and other artistes flocked.Appropriately, the building was acquired by the Rank Organisation in 1972,(probably Britain's largest film-making and film-showing company) when partially transformed into a 4-star hotel,with the proviso that it always retain some private tenants,in a dedicated wing.Gradually residents associated with MI5(demobbed after the war)  gave way to BBC staff (Broadcasting House is a brisk walk down Great Portland Street) and press junkets for Gandhi  and other film releases. A neighbour on the first floor with his own grand piano en suite was the musical prodigy Shura Cherkassky, who is said to have had an affair with Greta Garbo, coming perilously close to marrying her.

Another  face famous from films belonged to Kenneth Williams, star of the Carry On series of British screen comedies, who actually lived opposite the White House but often hailed taxis from its imposing front door.His shade may still frequent the garden for smokers added on the corner onto which his own mansion flat looked.The hotel passed through various international hands until Spain's leading hotel company,Sol Melia, acquired it in the late 1990s, and transformed it during  a  year-long, 30-million pound refurbishment. One of its recent innovations, replacing part of a former shopping arcade, is an elegant showplace for contemporary artists , run by two elegant ladies, and accordingly called Le  Dame Art Gallery. (They also curate art-works throughout the 8 floors of the Melia White House and striking installations outside the rear entrance,and an annual Art Fair that fills rooms for a few days  throughout the first floor.Beneath this now permanent vitrine for new work,in the Albany Suite, was presented in 2015 The Table of Alliance, a very literally moveable feast, which first in Rome and then in other cities saw performance artist Daniela Papadia bring 36 mixed guests to a dinner eaten on a table covered by a tapestry embroidered with designs corresponding to the human genome. The huge cloth fascinatingly filled the underground hospitality suite and was accompanied by a half-hour documentary The Table of Alliance, directed by Francesco Micciche, son of the celebrated film critic and author Lino Micchiche, screening during the exhibition hours.When I was selected by the New Statesman as a Student Journalist of the Year,for a satiric essay on sex and violence on the screen,entitled  "The Rape of the Cinema" , the prize money bought me one of the first Inter-Rail Cards, and the  re-publishing of my article in the British Embassy's own magazine in Paris (in English, as the editorial introduction underlined,pour nos lecteurs qui sont en mesure d'en aprecier sa verve), with another modest fee, encouraged me to pause in Paris to collect a copy, see a matinee of Fellini-Roma, and take the Simplon-Orient Express overnight to Venice.

After making my way across the Lagoon to the Lido, I found the Press Office of the Venice Film Festival in the ballroom of the Hotel Excelsior and after showing these magazines to a busy but kindly Italian, I was promptly rewarded with a press pass for the entire festival.My tessera was signed by Lino Micciche, for it was the distinguished FIPRESCI member who flourished his ink pen on the cream-coloured card for me.That was the year Cabaret was screened in Venice, because Liza Minnelli refused to return to Cannes, having been badly received in an earlier film premiered on the Croisette. I was only a sixth-former.but my A-level Latin metamorphosed quickly into fluent Italian,and ensured a lasting fondness for the world's first film festival, that became my own first festival to attend.

The next night I almost literally bumped into Charlie Chaplin as he was being wheeled to an open-air screening of City Lights in the Piazza San Marco.So it was quite a moving experience for me  to come home,some years later, after Wardour Street previews, for BBC or other commisions, to find Francesco Micciche busy in the family business as a successful documentary(and feature) director, for  I  have his much-missed now father to thank for encouraging me into the festival circuit and the profession of film criticism. After graduating from Oxford  as a Sunday Times 'New Critic' I would eventually meet Lino at many festivals and rendez-vous of FIPRESCI, of which I became a member myself.

Last month another vernissage was well-fuelled by Le Dame's usual prosecco  for the first UK solo show of American artist Brian Huber,  who hails from New Orleans (further justifying  the reference to Tennessee Williams in the title to this piece), studied Art and Architecture at the University of Louisiana,   worked for television studios and corporations in San Francisco, and lived on a houseboat in Sausalito.A short film shows him creating his most  attractive abstract landscapes, inspired by rhythms of jazz and blues (and some very vivid blue colours),sculpting giant sheets of acrylic paint into Braided and Circle Back designs. The exhibition continues until  3rd June 2017 and is well worth the walk down Memory Lane.

Phillip Bergson                                  www.ledameartgallery.com                               www.melia.com

In characteristic contrast to the ever-earlier Launch of the BFI London Film Festival, held (on 31st August 2017) in the terror-attack capital's largest cinema, which was awash with sponsor's mineral waters and organic chocolate bars as countless clips and trailers unreeled after breakfast, the Raindance Film Festival hosted a week of press previews in one of the tinest but toniest of screening rooms in the West End, in the lower floor of the Virgin lounge on the Haymarket, where there is a mini-cinema modelled on the First Class cabin of a Bransonian aircraft, complete with cute portholes along its right wall through which Virgina planes can be spied cruising through blue skies. The comfy armchairs afford good sight-lines even for sub-titled films and at the back is a hospitality bar stocked with hot and cold drinks and at Raindance's matinees healthy biscuits and fruit.Projection is fine as is the sound system-- and the focus is sharp as was evident for the preview of In Another Life,  world premiering and competing in the UK Feature section, with its eloquent, crisp black-and-white photography.I checked in for  four of the five pre-festival press screenings and couldn't have liked them more.

Not only throwing its nets far and wide for independently-produced features, shorts and documentaries, Raindance has succeeded in making itself one of the most audience-friendly of the host of festivals that crowd the calendar now...using central venues, with nearby social hubs (such as the excellent Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue, and encouraging film-makers to host receptions in adjacent galleries, hotels and easily-accessible venues).While not obsessing with red carpet arrivals, Raindance is always graced by notable  cineastes from all sides of the camera (Joanna Lumley was a jolly juror in 2016).

Indeed unlike another extravaganza soon to unspool on the other side of the Thames, it announced its jury members a fortnight ago- to include Jack O'Connell, Sean Bean, Christopher Eccleston, Celia Imrie, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Ewen Bremner, and Rachael Portman  - not exactly the Usual Suspects, but a very interesting clutch of cinema talents.  Josh Hartnett has already participated in a conference ahead of the opening film in which he stars, OH LUCY! (made in Japan) and though the 12 days of screenings have been diverted from the VUE Piccadilly to its renovated  bigger brother at the further end of Leicester Square, it's chocks away for a stimulating event.

www.raindance.org

PHILLIP BERGSON

One of the most remarkable British directing debuts of this or any year, In Another Life is a swiftly-paced,convincingly acted and utterly involving recreation of the struggles of a handful of refugees trapped in the "Jungle" camp near Calais. Directed with flair,finesse and dignity by Jason Wingarde it has credibly woven from clearly personal,true stories a fictionalised story of flight and pursuit and optimism, blending a multi-racial cast of highly capable professional actors with authentic or authentic-looking recreations of scenes and activities among the desperate men, women and children whose lives reached a standstill almost within sight of the cliffs of Dover, yet trapped on French soil, and often tricked by their own  fellow-travellers and people-smugglers.Excellent black-and-white photography never sentimentalises their plight, and the mix of tongues and accents(with most dialogues in English) ensures that the daily dramas,set-backs, and eventual tragedies are easy to understand.The sharp-eyed will spot a face from one of the UK's most popular TV soap operas (Emmerdale).

2017  84  minutes  IN ANOTHER LIFE enjoys a sold-out World Premiere at  20.30 on Tuesday 26th September

There is a further screening on Thursday 28th September at 3.30pm,also in the VUE West End Cinema, in London

PHILLIP BERGSON                                                            www.raindance.co.uk

Though based in High Wycombe ,the Third Edition of the highly independent Fisheye Film Festival ventures to nearby Beaconsfield tonight with a special screening inside the cinema of the famed National Film and Television School (recently complimented in the Hollywood Reporter as the top international film school) of the remarkable and multi-award-winning strange romance God's Own Country.

The film has just won another two top awards, at the Dinard Festival of British Films and will be screened at 7pm , followed by a presentation, moderated by moi, with the French-born producer of this Yorkshire-set rural drama, Manon Ardisson. Some tickets remaining at £10 may be available from 6.30pm, in the NFTS.

The  festival continues to 22nd October in various venues around the Chiltern lines, with the Awards Ceremony (for submitted shorts) at 6pm on Saturday 21st October 2017, in the Cineworld in High Wycombe.

www.fisheyefilmfest.uk

Phillip Bergson

It could hardly be a more topical time, given the international brouhahas in the media about Soviet cyberhacking and the alleged,well-funded if unsubtle  interference of Putinistas in elections around the globe for a second Russian Filmweek to be unleashed on an unsuspecting London.....the Brexiting metropolis whose only daily newspapers are now owned by a Russian plutocrat who also happens to run  the only full-time local TV  channel(which,incidentally, currently programmes consistently  the best of British and other classic feature films morning,noon and night,having  access not only to  to the  back catalogues of the legendary Ealing Studios but also,it seems, Studio Canal's entire English-language feature acquisitions).There has been a long tradition of screening and appreciating film productions from Russia in the British capital.The first film societies here premiered Battleship  Potemkin and other silent classics,and all through the Cold War years masterpieces of the 1940s and 1950s and festival award-winners from Moscow and the Republics were staple fare in art-house cinemas across the city.The early London Film Festivals regularly launched notable features, and the National Film Theatre often presented seasons of Russian cinema with carefully selected (and supervised) cineastes in attendance,and sundry film critics were often feted at vodka-fuelled receptions in the Embassy near Notting Hill Gate. British Council tours often shepherded local  film-makers and journalists to film-weeks across all the Russias.Before the Fall of the Wall, yours truly organised the first Soviet Film Week in Oxford, attended by the legendary Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis, star of Solaris, and as a People's Hero permitted to travel briefly abroad (without any cash at all) with a fellow director, in those Former Happy Times when the Baltics belonged to the Soviet Empire.

With the change of political regimes,and of the name of the country, Russian film-making has had to battle with market forces and is less able to rely on state financing, but nevertheless new generations of film-makers have found fame at foreign festivals and increasingly won paying audiences domestically as well as abroad.For some years there was a boutique annual survey of new Russian films presented each winter in an art-house miniplex close to Piccadilly Circus, which was perked up last year by Filip Perkon and relaunched as a new event, with well-attended premieres, parties and events around the West End and even out of town,and now his 2nd Russian Filmweek has spectacularly mushroomed from five to 19 venues,and brings some 70  films and 100 professional guests from Russia  to England from 19th to 26th November 2017, with a host of new sponsors(including a sparkling blue wine from France),screenings,parties,panels,gala dinners,awards,and exhibitions.

Phillip Bergson                                              www.russianfilmweek.org

Easter comes early to the not-so-United Kingdom this year, and so has KINOTEKA which has brought for its 16th annual Edition a  cornucopia of features, shorts and documentaries of Polish provenance or connection,  as well as events, exhibitions, Master Classes (with  Krzystof  Zanussi, a true master of film-making returning from Warsaw to present his  very first feature The Structure of Crystals, made in 1969, and to discuss his work in the ICA),Workshops and even a Supper Club.

Again capably curated by Marlena Lukasiak, of the Polish Cultural Institute with her lively young team and enthusiastically supported by the Polish Embassy (where the lately-landed ambassadorial  spouse is evidently something of a cinephile), the Festival runs from 7th to 29th March 2018 and although there was apparently no Press Launch, and programmes are not being despatched elsewhere around the Kingdom as in past years, it has spread to different venues across the capital.A moving Opening Gala was held in what some of us still call NFT 1-the larger and recently refurbished cinema in the  BFI Southbank, with the local  premiere of Birds are Singing in Kigali, and a discussion with Joanna Kos-Krauze,in the sad absence of her late husband and co-director Kryzystof Krauze. Set after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, it focusses on the efforts of a Polish ornithologist to save a local Tutsi woman, and when they are unable to settle in Poland they return to the riven country full of fragile hope. The film eloquently expressed the Krauzes' own knowledge of Africa and also bears witness to the new interests of the contemporary Polish cinema, sharing wider pan-European and indeed global visions. Screenings have been held in Britain's very first home for flickering images, the marvellous  Regent Street Cinema, as well as in one of London's newest and most luxurious mini-cinemas the JW3 (inside the recently-opened Jewish Cultural Centre on Finchley Road) with some historic features screened in the legendary Polish Hearth Club- Ognisko Polskie- the South Kensington home of the Polish Government-in-exile during the Second World War (and again today a delicious restaurant and bar).

In Notting Hill's The Coronet (itself until lately an historic cinema) stage and film works based on the writings of Bruno Schulz have been on show.The Festival  again closes in the Barbican, this time in the labyrinthine arts complex's subterranean Cinema 1,  with a digitally restored silent film from 1927 The Call of the Sea with a specially composed new live score.

For the opening night party there was real discovery in the use of an exquisitely decorated semi-secret library--type hospitality room nestling near the public  bar and restaurant in the BFI Southbank, accessible almost in C.S.Lewis fashion.

One hopes for a similarly original festive  farewell somewhere in the bowels of the Barbican tonight!

www.kinoteka.org.uk

Phillip Bergson

In such grim times, and with such over-budgeted but under-scripted movies hurtling into cinemas around the globe, what a delight Picturehouses brought across the troubled British Isles last night with nation-wide previews in their lovingly-run cinemas -for One Night Only- of a simply marvellous new  documentary Nothing Like a Dame (83 minutes, co-produced by BBC TV and due for subsequent cinema outings in due course).Roger Michell has fashioned a fascinating and frequently funny series of simple conversations between a quartet  of historic Leading Ladies.The venue is the amply-expanded old "cottage" near Chichester that still  houses Joan Plowright the Lancashire lass who became Sir Laurence Olivier's  Lady when he was performing in the Sussex Festival Theatre (they met on-screen I think first in Tony Richardson's adaptation of The Entertainer), where  now  Dame Joan  resides, sadly near-blind but still mobile and hugely lucid, and to its lovely garden -or, during a brief rainy shower, indoors in  a comfy salon-four formidable  comrades-in-greasepaint and clearly long-time and long-suffering old friends Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench,  Dame Eileen Atkins and Dame Joan Plowright  gather to gossip, reminisce-and with an occasional off-screen prompting, survey and summarise over 70 years each of their  performances on stage, in films, and  in celebrated- and some less glorious-television productions.

The title sets the tone well, and as soon as Nino Rota's  evocative melody from Amarcord plays beneath the title you know you are in very good hands. There are some of the already  well-known anecdotes (when Dame Maggie was playing Desdemona to Dame Joan's hubby -( "Well you already were a Lady")-Olivier as the heavily made-up Moor of Venice, as a vocal exercise she called into his dressing room at the Old Vic one night "How now, brown cow?" ), but there are also many fresher tales from the Green Room and from these legends in their salad days(and Edinburgh Festival nights spent fleeing from theatrical knights apparently!).But even predatory stage partners are dissed with affection, and as you might expect it is Dame Maggie who comes up with most of  the waspish asides, and Dame Judi some  of the ruder barbs.Very judicious editing knits in a wealth of wonderful clips and old fotos, stage bills,memoirs of the era of  West End hits,Globes ancient and modern, and distinguished flops and Royal Premieres.Most intriguing is footage of each of the actresses receiving her Honour from a member of our Royal Family. Politcal observations surface occasionally;wit,wisdom and very  few regrets pour forth in every sequence and the film really fizzes like the  glasses of sparkling wine these living legends are occasionally permitted to indulge  in.It is a rare production that could well sustain a longer running time- may these monarchs of the movies reign over us yet.No one can rain on their parades.

Phillip  Bergson                      The film is on release across Great Britain now in various  cinemas

While much of the international film world was cavorting across the Croisette, confused and often rain-swept, and desperately seeking empowerment for female cineastes on and off the screens of the largest festival in the world, where who knows how few of les femmes have received the Palme d'Or (apart from the Down Under champion Jane Campion?), once more with feeling the Israeli Film Festival  known as Seret was again unreeling in apparently sunnier Albion, as the lively,loving work of not one but three female festival directors-- Odelia Haroush,Anat Koren and Patty Hochmann, with screenings,panels,and a few parties, across London, Brighton, and first-footing into Edinburgh, between 6th and 17th May  2018. They retained loyal sponsors and some new supporters and some 20 new features, documentaries and fiction from Israel, and even some laughter in these grim times, ably ladelled out by some episodes from the hit TV series Vicky and I,  with a host of visiting directors, producers and a genuine star in the making in the bubbly yet shrewd and immensely personable stage and TV actress Magi Azarzar. A  fine collection of celluloid to commemorate coincidentally the 70th anniverary of the State itself and sold-out screenings everywhere.

A hearty L'chaim! (whatever that may mean).

Phillip Bergson                            www.seret-international.org

As part of the celebrations marking its 250th anniversary  as a teaching venue, the Royal Academy on London's Piccadilly has undergone some extensive, if not eccentric , renovations and refurbishing of adjacent parts of the building,sadly not  equipping its new Lecture Theatre with adequate facilities for screening cinema productions that could enhance the changing art displays or become a destination in itself  as that famous street is now utterly bereft of any public cinema. But wihin the newly,oddly connected galleries is one of the many exhibitions devoted to Tacita Dean, a very attractive show called Landscapes, the highlight of which is probably the most remarkable new film on show in London, a  56 minute,visually enthralling exploration/inspiration from the Antigone.It is a twin-screened panavision fllmed in locations as extraordinary as Bodmin Moor and Thebes (Illinois!) with one of our better actors Stephen Dillane taking on the mantle and modern sunglasses of the Sophoclean tragic hero wandering between the landscapes of the plays of the ancient Greek trilogy,in a complex and fascinating and occasionally playful (I refrain from using the term ludic) but often moving meditation on many themes, apparently prompted by the simple fact that Tacita Dean's own sister is called Antigone! There is more of this than meets the blinded eyes of Oedipus himself and I shall attempt to elucidate more after a second viewing.But meanwhile please  make a pilgrimage yourself during the run of the exhibition.Screenings on the hour, and comfortable armchairs for first-comers.

In the Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries   19 May-12 August 2018 

Phillip Bergson                                                       www.royalacademy.org.uk