Outdoor film festival guide

We cross our fingers and hope it won't rain during this summer's multitude of outdoor screenings.

Jul 19 2006

There's a lovely scene in 'Cinema Paradiso' when the cinema-projectionist hero shows a film on the walls of the piazza outside his movie theatre. The sequence summons up the special charm of watching movies outside, with the gossamer-like moving images falling onto brick, turning ordinary buildings into things of silky magic.

Until quite recently, this transformative experience was mostly associated with warm settings like the Mediterranean locale of 'Cinema Paradiso'. Outdoor screenings in Britain are a riskier proposition, as liable to provoke summer storms as a well-practiced raindance.

But alfresco cinema is fast becoming a regular fixture of London's summer calendar, with a number of special screenings throughout the next two months. Whether this is one of the very few upsides of global warming, I'll leave to climatologists, but there's no doubting the quality of what's on offer for audiences.

Time Out makes a strong contribution, hosting a couple of events in Hyde Park in tandem with the Serpentine Gallery. The films chosen are bold, edgy works: 'Performance', Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell's stunning slice of '60s psychedelia, screens on August 4, while David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet', his dark, 1986 masterpiece, unspools on August 9. Watching Dennis Hopper exclaim 'Baby wants to fuck' on a 50-foot screen in one of London's most genteel royal parks must be worth the price of admittance – a modest £8.

Somerset House reprises its season of annual screenings with nine evenings in August: the emphasis is on mainstream entertainment like 'School of Rock' and 'The Big Lebowski', but there's still scope for a couple of intriguing choices.

The grand elegance of the hotel setting of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror 'The Shining' (August 12) may find a spooky echo in the stately surroundings of Somerset House, but will its sense of claustrophobic dread survive the transition outside?

The programming of Charles Laughton's 1950 thriller 'The Night of the Hunter' (August 15) is unquestionably inspired: watching the film's many haunting moonlit exteriors in an open-air venue at night is such an atmospheric proposition you might never want to watch the film indoors again.

The outdoor experience reaches its apogee with the Studio Artois Live Outdoor festival on July 22 and 23. Taking place in Greenwich Park, the two-day event is billed as Britain's first 'outdoor film festival' and revolves around two separate evening screenings: 'Kill Bill Vol 1' on the first night, 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off' on the second.

But throughout the day there are themed installations and music performances, including 'Kill Bill'-inspired cabaret, short films from the BFI and Future Shorts and live acts mingling with the audience.

An attempt to invest a bit of Glastonbury-style glamour to moviegoing – film screenings have long been part of the music-festival experience – Studio Artois Live costs £13.50 per day.

A more intimate venue is provided by the Tooting Bec Lido which is hosting a weekend of films from July 28 (£14/£10 concs). The 'Dive In' season of films showing at this glorious open-air swimming pool kicks off with the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie 'The Swimmer', an adventurous choice since the film holds up swimming pools as a symbol of the sterile values of '60s suburbia (the film follows Lancaster as he attempts to swim across his commuter-belt town, using only the private pools of his neighbours).

There's a more predictable but still welcome outing for MGM swimming star Esther Williams's 'Million Dollar Mermaid' on July 29 and July 30 sees the lido transformed into an elaborate stage set for performances and installations by the Future Cinema troupe.

Getting wet won't be a problem at the Lido, where film-goers are invited to go for a dip while watching the movies. But be prepared for rain at the other events, which will take place regardless of the weather.

See individual websites for more details: timeout.com/london/park_nights; somerset-house.org.uk; studioartois.co.uk.

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