Christopher Nolan and Tacita Dean to headline ‘LFF Connects’

Christopher Nolan and Tacita Dean

The 59th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express® announces LFF Connects – a brand new series of thought-provoking high-impact talks intended to stimulate new collaborations and ideas by exploring both the future of film itself and how film engages with other creative industries including television, music, art, games and creative technology. 

• Industry accreditation is now open

British filmmaker Christopher Nolan, internationally acclaimed for some of the most original, compelling and successful films in contemporary cinema (Interstellar, Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento), and Tacita Dean, lauded for her art work in film (and whose grand-scale Tate Modern exhibition FILM transfixed audiences), will launch the new series of high profile talks on Friday 9 October at BFI Southbank with a conversation that reframes the future of film.

Christopher Nolan and Tacita Dean are both passionate advocates within their fields for film – not simply as a technology – but as a medium that offers intrinsically rich and unique qualities needed by artists and filmmakers, as well as a hugely engaging experience for audiences. In the LFF Connects Film conversation moderated by BFI Creative Director Heather Stewart, whose work in cultural programming is bringing new audiences and creative collaborators to film, Nolan and Dean will also explore the importance of seeing films projected on film as an essential part of our cultural experience, as well as the necessity of determining new archival and exhibition standards that secure film’s future, and why the debate around film needs to change. They will also be joined in the discussion by Alexander Horwath, Director of the Austrian Film Museum who has written and spoken extensively about the importance of showing film as film and preservation, asking how can any cultural heritage remain intelligible when handed down to future generations without attention to its medium?

Tacita Dean says:

“As an artist who makes and exhibits film for reasons indexical to the medium, I have had no choice but to fight to get film re-appreciated for what it is: a beautiful, robust and entirely different way of making and showing images in the gallery and in the cinema. Film has characteristics integral to its chemistry and internal discipline that form my work and I cannot be asked to separate the work from the medium that I used to make it. We need to keep the medium distinct from the technology; we need to keep the choice of film available for artists, filmmakers and audiences.”

Trailblazers from other creative fields who are having an impact on how we make and think about films will be announced in the coming weeks as LFF Connects headliners.

Clare Stewart, Festival Director, BFI London Film Festival, says:

“This year we launch a new direction for the BFI London Film Festival’s industry engagement programme – building on the position of London as one of the world’s leading creative cities – with LFF Connects, a series of events designed to look at the future of film and its intersection with the wider creative industries. We could not hope to have a more dynamic, impactful launch than to bring together Christopher Nolan and Tacita Dean, two of the greatest creators working in film and art to discuss the future of film as a medium.”

A British artist based in Berlin, and recent artist in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Tacita Dean is internationally renowned for her 16mm and 35mm films, as well as other works in various mediums, most notably her chalkboard drawings. She is a former Turner Prize nominee. In 2011, she made FILM for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London and is a founding member of savefilm.org.

Christopher Nolan is internationally recognised for being one of the most successful and innovative filmmakers working today, creating films that bridge blockbuster and art-house including The Dark Knight trilogy (2005, 2008, 2012), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), The Prestige (2006), Insomnia (2002) and Memento (2000).

Alexander Howath is the Director of the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, formerly with the Vienna International Film Festival and author of books about Michael Haneke and Josef von Sternberg, Peter Tscherkassky and American Cinema among others. 

Heather Stewart, the BFI’s Creative Director leads on the BFI’s cultural strategy and activities across the UK and worldwide including making the BFI National Archive – the biggest collection of film and television in the world – available to new generations; creating hugely successful programmes such as Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder, The Genius of Hitchcock, GOTHIC and Britain on Film; and forging ground-breaking cultural collaborations with international partners such as China.

LFF Connects Film with Tacita Dean, Christopher Nolan, Alexander Horwath and Heather Stewart will take place at the BFI Southbank on Friday 9 October.

The BFI London Film Festival would like to thank Tate for its collaboration on this project.

This year’s LFF programme will be announcing further events imminently that offer unique opportunities for industry professionals to engage in debate, explore important areas of policy key to growth, share knowledge, generate business opportunities and showcase talent.  

In addition, this year’s Festival is expanding services and facilities offered to industry delegates. A new suite of delegate passes is being introduced including Gold (with year-round benefits), Silver and Bronze passes and tailored Documentary and Discovery passes.

• Industry accreditation is now open

The film and public events programme for the 59th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express® will be presented at the Odeon Leicester Square 10.00-11.00am on Tuesday 1 September 2015.