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We are BFI FAN Young Consultants, with biographies here from all over the UK. We are always open to chatting with you about targeting and attracting younger audiences to your venue, club, or internet space.
Last December, we were also featured on a panel for This Way Up 2020 giving tips on how venues can attract and sustain young audiences. Have a watch of our talk here.
For 2021 we were thinking hard about the kind of unique value that we could bring to the exhibition world. We’ve got some nifty things planned. To start, a monthly newsletter 🥰
This month we will picking our Valentine’s film picks 💓 🍿
Plus we also pay homage to classic Chinese Cinema.
🎇🧧 Happy Chinese New Year! 🧧 🎇
Year of the OX 🐂
From: Thea Berry, Freelance Producer/Curator, (Bristol)
“On a day that is about feeling and emotion, why not cosy up with Can’t Get You Out of My Head, the new film series that aims to capture the feeling of now by journalist and documentarian Adam Curtis? Curtis is a master storyteller and what I love so much about his filmmaking is how he uses music and archive footage to capture the mood and emotion of complex political and cultural movements. It’s fascinating stuff.”
👀 Watch on BBC iPlayer.
🦴 Bonus: The Blindboy Podcast interviews Curtis here.
From: Megan Mitchell, Producer (Matchbox Cineclub, Glasgow)
As we rapidly traverse into a digital-first era, analogue mementoes of your loved ones might be fewer and further between. And with film and photography sharing the same concerns of format preservation and fetishisation, with nostalgia of the tactical and physical leading hearts and minds, I found particular comfort and joy in Photobooth.net. Photobooth.net lays claim to being the 'most comprehensive photobooth resource on the internet', and I wouldn't doubt it, but it is it's archiving of instances of photobooths and colour strips in films which has brought me near unrivalled joy this week. Instances from 1928 all the way to 2020 are catalogued under individual film titles, but the blog collecting 1980s examples is a real treat, featuring a number of romantic comedies - including the world’s greatest film, Valley Girl (1982), - and punky, fun films I hadn’t heard of before; Breaking All the Rules (1985) and Gotcha (1985).
🔖 Read: on Photobooth.net.
From: Caroline Wilson, Co-Founder UNDR LNDN (London)
Dogfight (1991) Director: Nancy Savoca
My pick is an alternative love story that is approaching it’s 30th anniversary later this year.
Dogfight is a 1991 film set in San Francisco, California, during the 1960s. It stars River Phoenix and Lili Taylor, and was directed by Nancy Savoca. The film explores the love between an 18-year-old Marine, Lance Corporal Eddie Birdlace, on his way to Vietnam, and a young woman, Rose Fenny.
In 1963, the night before Eddie and his friends are shipped to Vietnam, they play a dirty game called "dogfight". They all have to seek a woman for a party, and who finds the most ugly one, wins a prize. Rose and Eddie dual their conflicting ideas and explore the themes of social justice, love and respect in the space of one night.
I loved this film because of the originality of the story. I really hope studios and filmmakers continue this tradition and take more risks with unconventional love stories.
👀 Watch: by renting on Amazon Prime here.
From: Gabrielle Jackson - Marketing & Programme Assistant (Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal)
Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love never gets old. Filled with longing and desire, this bittersweet masterpiece is one of my all time favourite films. Set in 1960’s Hong Kong, it follows the story of two neighbours as their marriages struggle and their lives converge. The cinematography is magic.
👀 Watch on Amazon Prime here, no Valentine required. ❤️
🍖 Bonus: BFI Player’s The World of Wong Kar Wai including new 4K restorations.
From: Yasmin Begum - Freelance Creative (Cardiff, Wales)
Solomon & Gaenor is a 1999 Welsh film set in the South Wales valleys in 1911 about a Jewish man who falls in love with a non-Jewish woman amidst a backdrop of racial and religious tension in the valleys. A trilingual film in Welsh, English and Yiddish, it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 72nd Academy Awards. It's such a beautiful film.
This film resonates with me because it's a beautiful, moving and poignant portrayal of historical Welsh life and the Welsh lived experience. Solomon & Gaenor is exquisitely shot, featuring breathtaking evocative shots of the Glamorganshire countryside. Its themes span love, identity, faith, and the experiences of women amid the anti-Jewish riots of 1911 in the South Wales Valleys.
👀 Rent on BFI Player for £3.50 here. Though it’s also available on Amazon Prime here for 99p.
From: Aaron Guthrie - aaronguthr.ie (Belfast)
Ever since randomly finding it on Reddit, I’m obsessed with this new company Tribute Brand who are selling contactless, digitally fabricated clothes, where there’s no shipping, no carbon, and no waste, no gender and no size. Imagine? Cyber couture, in other words.
You choose your garment and supply a portrait. Their team, who have backgrounds in fashion, CGI 3D modeling, UX design and coding, models it and dresses you. If you’re say, an influencer, wearing physical clothes for shoots that your audience will only ever see online, or you know living through Zoom, the difference for audiences between that and this seems slim. I’m off to order my skin tight, iridescent silver, zip up with the words ‘Lucky Angel’ on for Valentine’s.
🛍️ Browse and shop here.
That’s all folks, until next time 👋
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