If there is one film that fills me with more emotions that I can neither understand or bear it is Bill Forsyth's 1983 Scottish comedy Local Hero. It is a film that makes you laugh yet has a melancholic tone that always seems one step away from breaking your heart. It was named #37 on the list of BFI Top 100 British Films by the British Film Institute.
There is nothing 'soft' about the UK's arts and creative industries, two of our biggest economic assets. Neither is there anything soft about our continuing work through the recent unrest in the Arab world and the British Council remaining on the ground during the last decade in Burma, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most people accept their graduate unemployment with grace. For some reason, and to the horror of my bank, I decided this was the best time for a bedroom start-up. I now run the British Student Film Festival, a national exhibition of student film showcasing unheard and under-appreciated British talent.
Allan Niblo is an award-winning film producer and a founder member of film production and distribution company, Vertigo Films. His past credits include Human Traffic, Football Factory, StreetDance 3D and the award winning Monsters. Here, he reveals his inspiration for filmmaking and passes on top tips to aspirational filmmakers.
Watching black boys from London as protagonists made me giddy with joy, made me a black girl from London feel recognised, less invisible in the wider world. I don't know much about the actors that played the teenagers but their mannerisms and accents were convincing. Even in dealing with the film's drug dealing sublot which felt superflous - empty, weighty and simplistic - they were earnest enough.
All Night Long (1962) is an exception, a film I can't just turn up to. At the weekend I began watching it in jeans and a t-shirt but felt so slobbish that halfway through I paused and changed into a dress. (This wasn't sufficient but it was better.) One must prepare to watch All Night Long, it is an invitation to a party. You should attend in high spirits, your back straight, head held up.
Ayoade has once again shown himself to be as fine behind the camera as he is in front (excluding perhaps the deeply unfunny The IT Crowd and the misjudged Marenghi spin-off Man to Man with Dean Learner), and with his feature debut has produced a dark, sensitive and at times hilarious exploration of small town teenage existence.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning's infamous line is "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not". This is a sentiment we are all well versed in. I once said it to a PE teacher who chastised me for being 'boring and slow'. You said it to your parents as a temperamental teen. Or to a friend who called you names for liking the wrong things.