Film4 Summer Screen
Behind the Screen

With film and TV music composer Miguel Mera
The late John Barry is undoubtedly one of cinema’s greatest composers. Well known for his outstanding, brand-defining scores for the Bond series from Dr. No through The Living Daylights, he also wrote the music for countless other major features: Petulia, The Lion in Winter, Walkabout, Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa, Body Heat, among them. Over the years, he received 5 Oscars, a BAFTA and 4 Grammy awards, an amazing record which also reflects the high regard in which he is held by the industry. In this event, Barry’s musical sons and daughters guided the audience through a rich array of his spectacular scores to celebrate his particularly golden touch.

With last year’s winner, director Michael Please
Highlighting some of the UK’s brightest filmmaker talents of the future, this event showed highlights from 2011's BAFTA nominations for short film and short animation award including the animation winner: The Eagleman Stag, whose director Michael Please introduced the film.

With director Joe Cornish and Film 4’s David Cox
Writer/Director Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block was one of 2011's biggest home-grown hits. A brilliantly inventive south-London set sci-fi horror where ‘inner city meets outer space’, as the tagline memorably puts it. We were delighted to welcome the filmmaker ahead of the night's screening to discuss with Film4’s David Cox some of the movies which influenced him, from the work of directors John Carpenter and Walter Hill, to E.T. and action-packed 80s extravaganzas such as the first part of the double bill, Die Hard.

With director Terence Davies, writer David Nicholls and film critic Ian Hayden Smith
Sunset Blvd, The Seven Year Itch, Some Like it Hot, Double Indemnity, The Apartment... there is a Billy Wilder for anyone who loves movies; over the course of nearly 60 years at the top of the film industry, he amassed enough famous fans to fill all of Universal Studios. This event celebrated some of the best Wilder moments with a few of his high profile fans.

With Made in Dagenham producer Elizabeth Karlsen, BAFTA winning This is England ’86 actor Vicky Mcclure, author Lizzie Francke and writer Hannah Patterson.
Thelma & Louise and La Femme Nikita breathed fresh life into the cinema on their release in the early 90s, finding eager fans in female viewers who were hungry for intelligent, tough women on screen. But what kind of female protagonists has cinema offered in the 25 years since? With a panel of smart filmmakers, writers and social commentators, we looked at more recent cinema and TV offerings from Misfits and Kick Ass to Salt and Sucker Punch to debate whether movies about strong women are for women at all.

With host Barry Norman and Oscar-winning writer Sir Ronald Harwood
Roman Polanksi’s films regularly garner acclaim for great writing, and for the director’s ability to get the best out of a screenplay: whether it’s his own re-working of a novel for Rosemary's Baby; Robert Towne’s script for Chinatown; or collaborating over several films with partners like Gerard Brach (Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, Tess) and Ronald Harwood (The Pianist and Oliver Twist). Two true raconteurs talked about Polanski's approach to cinema, script and story.

With multi-BAFTA and Oscar winning designer Colleen Atwood in conversation with Alice Rawsthorn, International Herald Tribune’s Design Critic.
The movies give costume designers a magnificent stage to showcase some true works of art; think Gone with the Wind, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Moulin Rouge, Far from Heaven, The 5th Element and Alice in Wonderland, to name but a few. Anyone who has seen In the Mood For Love will also have Maggie Chung’s elegant 50s dresses seared in the memory. In this event, some of our great designers talked us through favourite movie costumes from supreme sartorial elegance to fantastical acts of imagination.

With celebrated musician/composer Nitin Sawhney
Nitin composed the score for videogame Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, he joined Tameem Antoniades and Tom Colvin from games production house Ninja Theory and host, gaming producer at BAFTA Dave Green, to examine the creative relationship between the film and gaming industries. With support from Nintendo.

With Director Mike Newell
Founded in 1947, The Actor’s Studio in New York can legitimately lay claim to training some of the finest screen actors in cinema history. Famous for teaching Stanislavskli’s ‘method’, its list of alumni reads like a who’s who of Hollywood greats – Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, James Dean, Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda to name just a few. Ahead of tonight’s screening of Serpico (director, Sidney Lumet, and Al Pacino attended the studio) we welcomed a panel of filmmakers, actors and writers to discuss the impact of The Actor’s Studio and its incredible legacy.

With filmmakers Tony Dalton, Neil Marshall and Barry Purves and host Justin Johnson
Hollywood’s creature creations may be going digital but some of the most enduring in movie history were made the painstaking way - with models, make up effects and cell animation. From King Kong to The Fly, Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans to Gremlins, the imagination of visual effect creators has played a vital role in cinema’s history. Our panel recalled the movies that both inspired and terrified them as young fans, spurring them on to make their own creature features.

This talk explored games production; a team of game designers provided an illustrated guide through the creative process, from the initial idea through to the final completed game.