How Lucy Pardee spots future film stars in the wild
What made Attack the Block or Bafta favourite Rocks so special? Lucy Pardee s uniquely anthropological brand of street casting
Bukky Bakray has been nominated for a BAFTA
Rocks is the little film that could. It felt like an industry coup even before it was nominated for a whopping eight Baftas (more than any other title) yesterday. Shot in London in 2018, with the lead cast populated by young people who had never acted before, with a story (by Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson) shaped around them, it’s a miracle of a film, I suggest to its casting director Lucy Pardee. “It is a miracle,” she says. “The further I get away from the making of it, the more I can see just how special it is.”
Irish Film London set to celebrate the creativity of Irish women in film
28/01/2021 - The organisation has announced the full programme of its St Brigid’s Day events, along with two new podcasts and two exclusive talks
London-based non-profit organisation Irish Film London has announced the full programme of its 2021 St Brigid’s Day events (31 January-3 February), delivered in association with the Embassy of Ireland Great Britain and a cohort of Irish cultural organisations. In detail, this year’s initiative will promote the creativity of Irish women in film and offer online audiences the chance to revisit recent female-fronted Irish features and shorts, along with two new podcast releases and two exclusive talks with some of the filmmakers involved.
Mix 107.9
by Hope Madden and George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Let’s be honest, no one saw much of anything movie-wise this year. The highest grossing cinematic releases made so little they would have been considered catastrophic bombs in any other year, and streaming numbers confirmed that we were having a hard time zeroing in on new releases.
Still, there were some exceptional films that simply disappeared without even a hello. These are movies that broke new ground, broke our hearts, explored new genre hybrids, reimagined familiar tales, startled our senses, and otherwise just impressed the hell out of us. We really want to introduce you to these guys, which we list in alphabetical order because they deserve equal attention (and we argued too much about the ranking).
The Secret Garden and Noël Coward adaptation
Blithe Spirit to Sky Cinema for a UK release.
“There is definitely uncertainty,” says producer Elizabeth Karlsen of Number 9 Films, producers of
Their Finest and
Mothering Sunday. “No-one really knows exactly what the landscape is going to be like out there for theatrical distribution when we come out of it. You have the double whammy of Covid-19 with the [impact of] streamers.”
However, there is plenty of evidence the sector is well positioned to thrive in a post-pandemic, SVoD-driven market.
Altitude, Vertigo, Curzon and Modern Films have all successfully released UK films on multiple platforms and there is no sign they will be stopping now. With US studios retrenching and becoming less internationally minded and more focused on streaming services, there may be opportunities for local distributors in the theatrical marketplace.