Bringing it all back home

Join us as Time Out screens some of the greatest films ever made in our city.

Aug 29 2006

Here at Time Out, we spend a lot of time reporting from film festivals, both here in London and across the world from Sundance to Cannes, Toronto to Karlovy Vary. So it's with some relish that we've now turned the tables and created a film season of our own back at home. The Time Out 'London on Screen' festival will take place at 22 cinemas across the city throughout September and its aim is to look back and celebrate some of the best films ever made in and about our capital, from Hitchcock's 1936 film 'Sabotage' (with its eerily prescient focus on the bombing of a bus) to Saul Dibb's intelligent gun drama 'Bullet Boy', which was released in our cinemas only last year.

Some readers may recall a special issue of the magazine that we published last October dedicated to London's greatest films. In that 'London on Film' special, we presented 50 films, old and new, and rated them, in the manner of a long Sunday evening's viewing on Channel 4, from one to 50. Mike Leigh's 'Naked' grabbed the number one spot, with Gary Oldman's 'Nil by Mouth' and Humphrey Jennings' 'Fires Were Started' coming in close behind.

Our list included John Mackenzie's crime thriller 'The Long Good Friday', Derek Jarman's lyrical, terrifying vision of a society gone wrong, 'The Last of England', and Bruce Robinson's hilarious, devastating 'Withnail & I'.

Our desire was to remember some of the films made by our city's more interesting cinematic chroniclers – filmmakers whose works were shot on location here and that succeed in speaking to us about some aspect of London’s history and people. Crucially, however, whatever their merit as contributions to our social history, the films chosen had to be, first and foremost, exceptional works of art.

Once these vague, unscientific boundaries were established, my colleagues Geoff Andrew and Ben Walters joined myself at a nearby curry house to start the process of concocting a wish list. Whittling down our favourite London movies to just 50 wasn't easy, as we soon discovered (although the wine helped).

Questions arose. How many Ealing comedies to pick? (We chose two; 'Passport to Pimlico' and 'The Ladykillers'.) Should we include more than one Hitchcock? (In the end, we picked three: 'The Lodger', 'Sabotage' and 'Frenzy'.) Which Stephen Frears film to select? 'My Beautiful Laundrette' or 'Dirty Pretty Things'? (We went for 'My Beautiful Laundrette'; it was important to include a film from that period and we wanted to acknowledge the contribution of writer Hanif Kureishi.)

For our feature, we then rated our chosen 50 films in order of preference, from 50 down to the golden number one spot – a conceit we won't be following in the festival it has now led to. The competitive element was only ever a bit of fun; all 50 films, we believed, were worth celebrating, especially as many of the titles rarely ever make it to the big screen. Some, we discovered, haven't even been released on DVD.

For September's season, we've narrowed down our original 50 films to 32. We've also added some titles that weren't in our original list. Michael Powell's 'The Boy Who Turned Yellow' (his last collaboration with Emeric Pressburger, made for the Children's Film Foundation) and Robert Stevenson's 'One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing' will play at the Barbican's Children’s Film Festival under the 'London on Screen' banner.

Similarly, the Curzon cinemas have created double-bills from our original list, adding Isaac Julien's 'Young Soul Rebels' to Horace Ové's 'Pressure' at the Curzon Soho and pairing Peter Whitehead's 'Tonite Let's All Make Love in London' with his own, earlier 'Wholly Communion' at the Renoir.

Pleasingly, a number of filmmakers have agreed to take part in Q&A sessions after screenings of their films. Danny Boyle will speak after '28 Days Later…' at Whitechapel's Genesis Cinema on September 8, while Stephen Frears has agreed to interrupt a busy schedule promoting his new film, 'The Queen' to speak about 'My Beautiful Laundrette' at the Ciné Lumière on September 6. Mike Hodges ('I'll Sleep When I’m Dead'), Michael Winterbottom ('Wonderland'), Kevin Brownlow ('It Happened Here'), Peter Whitehead, Ben Hopkins ('The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz'), John Mackenzie and Horace Ové have all agreed to appear.

It's not unusual to see London on the big screen. The streets, buildings and monuments of our city appear regularly in films from around the world, from big-budget Hollywood movies seeking a European interlude to films by homegrown directors (Anthony Minghella is the latest; his 'Breaking and Entering' will premiere at the London Film Festival in October). But how often, as a Londoner, have you watched a film set in London, British or not, and squirmed in embarrassment? It's rare to see a film in which a filmmaker, British or otherwise, has fully and credibly embraced London as a theme, as a subject, as a city ripe for serious cinematic investigation and not just as a useful backdrop, a pretty skyline or a convenient location.

It's these films that our season will celebrate, from Gary Oldman's stark evocation of his own childhood in 'Nil By Mouth' to Patrick Keiller's docu-poem to the city, 'London'. The list of filmmakers is a roll call of exceptional talent: Ken Loach, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Stephen Frears, Joseph Losey, Roman Polanski and more. Each of these auteurs offers a vision of London that, like our city, is unique. We're proud to remember their work and, by implication, look forward to the next generation of our city's storytellers.

For full festival details, head here.

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