Filmmakers’ Afternoon Tea: Interviews with Directors at London Film Festival 2024

Well, that came and went in the blink of an eye! I’m speaking here of the London Film Festival 2024, whose near two-week run has come to an end. It’s been a jam-packed 12 days, but the punters seem happy and given the choice on offer, with all cinematic tastes catered for, it’s no surprise.

Opening and closing nights and the gala presentations obviously garner the most attention, but in between there are so many different events – talk and debates, awards, immersive art and extended reality, plus DJ sessions and this year, even a gaming lounge – you hardly know where to start.

Sandwiched, quite literally in this case, between all comings and goings are the Filmmakers’ Afternoon Teas. Smaller in scale than full-on press junkets, they are the speed dating of talent interrogation. A tasty selection of directors is made available for informal interviews in five and 10-minute slots – excellent in theory, but potentially a bit tricky if you’re wrangling a plateful of cake n’ sarnies and an unexpected slot opens up. All part of the fun though.

This year, I consider my haul exemplary, having bagged four sets of directors for the all important few minutes convo. As follows…

PAULINE BLACK – A 2-TONE STORY (Director Jane Mingay. Screenwriters Pauline Black, Jane Mingay. With Pauline Black, Arthur ‘Gaps’ Henderson, Don Letts)

Direct, straight-talking and an all-out compelling interviewee, 2-tone music legend and The Selecter frontwoman Pauline Black is someone you could chat to for at least five times the allotted 10 minute span. I did manage to wrestle a morsel of extra time, but the LFF staff run a tight ship and a firm tap on the shoulder means when your time’s up, you exit as gracefully as possible, or face the wrath of the clipboard.

The film came about because although Black had been unimpressed by previous attempts to document 2-tone from its late 1970s Coventry origins, she was still keen to collaborate with the right person.

“I was very much thinking to myself, if I actually want this to happen, it’s going to have to be something that I do. But two years ago, two people came into my life – one was Jane Mingay, the director and the other Nick Parsons, who produced.

“Nick had also produced a film about Poly Styrene. So, I could get on board with that, I knew her and I knew how we felt at the time.”

Archive and contemporary footage document the singer’s history encountering racism, sexism and hostility.

“I was the reporter on my own life, I guess. But nonetheless with, I think, a kind of veracity that you could only get from me.

“It was very much something that I felt was driven by a female perspective and of course I was the black female perspective, so I had the loudest voice in the room.”

A fascinating portrait of a pioneering stalwart of the British music scene.

MOTHER VERA (Directors Cécile Embleton, Alys Tomlinson)

Redemption a key theme in the debut feature of Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, Mother Vera. The film was the winner in the documentary competition, seeing off some stiff opposition and scooping the Grierson Award. Shot in Belarus, it’s the story of a young orthodox nun who must confront her past as she faces an uncertain future. Not your everyday subject, so Alys Tomlinson explained its origins.

“It came about through a serendipitous encounter. Cécile and I were working on a photography project about faith in Poland, part of the project was photographing pilgrims and we saw Vera standing collecting donation money for her convent in Belarus. We were both very taken by her from the moment we saw her.

Cécile continued, “It was very clear from the beginning that there was something going on with this woman, you know, outside of her monastic attire and as we got to know her better, the layers of her past revealed themselves. Vera was very open to showing us her life in the monastery and happy in front of the camera. The film really is a confession, and to get to that took a long time.”

What it took was six years, a huge commitment from the filmmakers, and it shows in the final feature.

“There’s no kind of archival footage and we don’t show photos of her before she became a nun. Her story is told in fragments really throughout the film – we didn’t want it to be like a documentary with her talking to camera. We want it to be more. To feel more special and intimate and like she was really confiding in us with the viewer.” A worthy winner.

FAMILIAR TOUCH (Director-Screenwriter Sarah Friedland with Kathleen Chalfant)

Familiar Touch was included in the Dare section of the festival, films that are considered to push the boundaries. This portrait of creeping dementia and its challenges is a powerful portrait of the mental ravages of the aging process and was shot in a hybrid documentary style.

Director Sarah Friedland was double booked on the day and wasn’t able to attend, so I spoke to actor Kathleen Chalfant who plays the role of protagonist Ruth. She explained the processes involved in making the picture.

“I think that that’s one of the things that Sarah was interested in was the way that time isn’t settled when the guardrails go away. All of us live in different times, but we have rules of behaviour that tell us that even if we’re feeling like our 12-year-old selves, we’re not allowed to behave in that way. And the thing about dementia is that you live in the present all the time, even though the present changes.”

It could be a problematic subject but the film handles it in a sensitive and unique way. Nominated for various awards at a number of film festivals, it did particularly well at Venice a month or so ago, picking up both Best Debut Film and Best Director awards in the Horizons category for Friedland. Kathleen Chalfant won Best Actress, also in the Horizons category, well deserved for a performer who has been working for decades across film and TV.

“In acting classes, they’re always telling you to live in the present… but you have to live for 50 or 60 years before you understand what that really means.”

SOFA, SO GOOD (Director-Screenwriters Kyle Thiele, Eli Thiele, Cole Thiele. With Joseph Jeffries, Yahel Pack)

Bringing up the rear in a much more light-hearted way, was a (very) quick interview with directors the Thiele Brothers, upping the ante from the more famous Safdies, Coens and Wachowskis with a sibling count of three. And a mate, Travis, who did the editing.

Their wacky indie comedy Sofa, So Good is a tale of the trials and tribulations of trying to manipulate a free sofa across town into your tiny apartment. The town in question being Dayton, Ohio, which to the best of my knowledge doesn’t usually crop up as a location with quite the regularity of LA, NY and San Francisco.

As Eli told me, “It was Kyle’s idea and it sparked it because Kyle and I lived together and at the time we didn’t have a couch, so we were taking turns sitting on a beach chair to watch basketball. It wasn’t ideal.”

No indeed.

Kyle took up the tale, “The more we talked to people the more we realised, oh yeah, everyone’s got a couch story. It’s a pretty relatable thing. The pursuit of comfort is something I think everyone strives for.”

Can’t argue with that. He continued:

“It’s all based off of our observations and lived experience. We live in a wild, wild Midwest town, and there’s a lot of characters and everyone in Dayton, Ohio was doing exactly what they wanted to do that day. And it was a celebration of that, it’s all based off people we’ve encountered and the absurdity of real life. And it’s Sisyphus too, instead of pushing that boulder up the hill, it’s pushing that couch across town. There’s a lot of parallels there.” Interest analogy.

Shot guerrilla-style by the threesome, the movie premiered at Cleveland International Film Festival and since then has garnered quite a fanbase. Even so when an LFF programmer reached out and invited them to London, they thought they were being spammed! Looks like this is just start of their motion picture journey so remember that name – the Thiele Bros, you saw it first here.
And that concludes this year’s catch for the Filmmakers’ Afternoon Teas. I’ll be up and at ‘em again next year and hopefully be able sign up for more than one. Best chat and eats in town!

The 68th BFI London Film Festival took place from 9-20 October at venues in London and across the UK www.bfi.org.uk/lff

Written by Gillian Smith