London Film Festival

　　Yvonne:  This year welcomes The Times newspapers' 50  BFI London Film Festival!

　　This British Film Institute festival is a truly international affair that focuses on

　　great films rather than marketing 1 big Hollywood movies.

　　Hello, I'm Yvonne Archer 2 and you're listening to Entertainment from

　　bbclearningenglish.com!

　　Sandra Hebron is the artistic 3 director of the London Film Festival and in an

　　interview for the BBC World Service, she talks about the international nature

　　of the festival – particularly this year, its 50th.  Listen out for the countries

　　Sandra mentions…

　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

　　One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality 4 and creativity to be

　　found literally 5 around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is

　　that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America.  I think

　　Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,

　　we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from

　　Argentina.

　　Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think

　　that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -

　　Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or

　　three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're

　　seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.

　　Yvonne:  Wow, that's a pretty impressive list of countries - and many of them have

　　more than one film to be shown during the London Film Festival. But how

　　many of those countries did you manage to catch?  Sandra Hebron mentioned

　　Argentina and Mexico as Latin American countries and there was Japan,

　　Korea and the Philippines from Asia.  But did you notice any of the

　　adjectives that Sandra used to describe those films – which she obviously

　　thinks are worth seeing? They're adjectives that you might come across in film

　　reviews.  See how many of them you can catch as we hear from Sandra

　　again…

　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

　　One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality and creativity to be

　　found literally around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is

　　that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America.  I think

　　Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,

　　we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from

　　Argentina.

　　Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think

　　that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -

　　Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or

　　three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're

　　seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.

　　Yvonne:  How did you get on?   We heard 'originality', 'creativity', 'amazing' and we

　　heard 'really strong' more than once. There was also 'leading' – as Sandra

　　described Mexico as 'one of the leading Latin American cinemas' – so Mexico

　　is producing some of the best films from the Latin American area. And you

　　may have noticed Sandra's last comment that there's 'a very diverse spread of

　　work' – meaning that there's a very large variety of films to be shown during

　　th

　　The Times 50  BFI London Film Festival!

　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

　　A very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.

　　Yvonne:  As there are so many great films to see during the Film Festival, it's almost

　　impossible to see them all. So how do we decide which films are worth seeing?

　　BBC Learning English's Alice Castle has attended the Berlin Film Festival, the

　　Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Prague and of course, the London Film Festival.

　　And Alice has also written several film reviews. Here she is with some tips on

　　how to choose our films:

　　INSERT - ALICE CASTLE

　　If you're going to a big film festival and you're trying to decide which films you want to see,

　　read the little what they call a 'blurb 6' which is the little bit of information that's written

　　underneath 7 the film title and you'll usually find that they'll tell you what the story is, who the

　　director is, who the actors are – and that usually gives you a pretty good idea if you're going

　　to like the film.

　　Yvonne:  Alice has her favourite countries and directors and that helps her to choose

　　which films to watch. But if we're new to film festivals, all we need to do is

　　simply read the 'blurb – that's the information we're given about each film

　　including its story - and that's a good way to find a film that will interest us!

　　The main aim of the London Film Festival is simply to show good films!

　　Perhaps you've seen some films from your own country which you think are

　　original and creative enough to take part in an international film festival. Why

　　not talk about that in English after today's Entertainment?!