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Yvonne: This year welcomes The Times newspapers’ 50th BFI London Film Festival!

This British Film Institute festival is a truly international affair that focuses on

great films rather than marketing big Hollywood movies.

Hello, I’m Yvonne Archer and you're listening to Entertainment from

bbclearningenglish.com!

Sandra Hebron is the artistic director of the London Film Festival and in an

interview for the BBC World Service, she talks about the international nature

of the festival – particularly this year, its 50th. Listen out for the countries

Sandra mentions…

INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality and creativity to be

found literally around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is

that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America. I think

Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,

we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from

Argentina.

Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think

that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -

Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or

three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're

seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries. 

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Yvonne: Wow, that’s a pretty impressive list of countries - and many of them have

more than one film to be shown during the London Film Festival. But how

many of those countries did you manage to catch? Sandra Hebron mentioned

Argentina and Mexico as Latin American countries and there was Japan,

Korea and the Philippines from Asia. But did you notice any of the

adjectives that Sandra used to describe those films – which she obviously

thinks are worth seeing? They’re adjectives that you might come across in film

reviews. See how many of them you can catch as we hear from Sandra

again…

INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality and creativity to be

found literally around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is

that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America. I think

Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,

we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from

Argentina.

Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think

that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -

Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or

three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're

seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.

Yvonne: How did you get on? We heard ‘originality’, ‘creativity’, ‘amazing’ and we

heard ‘really strong’ more than once. There was also ‘leading’ – as Sandra

described Mexico as ‘one of the leading Latin American cinemas’ – so Mexico

is producing some of the best films from the Latin American area. And you

may have noticed Sandra’s last comment that there’s ‘a very diverse spread of

work’ – meaning that there’s a very large variety of films to be shown during

The Times 50th BFI London Film Festival! 

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INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON

A very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.

Yvonne: As there are so many great films to see during the Film Festival, it’s almost

impossible to see them all. So how do we decide which films are worth seeing?

BBC Learning English’s Alice Castle has attended the Berlin Film Festival, the

Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Prague and of course, the London Film Festival.

And Alice has also written several film reviews. Here she is with some tips on

how to choose our films:

INSERT - ALICE CASTLE

If you're going to a big film festival and you're trying to decide which films you want to see,

read the little what they call a 'blurb' which is the little bit of information that's written

underneath the film title and you'll usually find that they'll tell you what the story is, who the

director is, who the actors are – and that usually gives you a pretty good idea if you're going

to like the film.

Yvonne: Alice has her favourite countries and directors and that helps her to choose

which films to watch. But if we’re new to film festivals, all we need to do is

simply read the ‘blurb – that's the information we're given about each film

including its story - and that’s a good way to find a film that will interest us!

The main aim of the London Film Festival is simply to show good films!

Perhaps you’ve seen some films from your own country which you think are

original and creative enough to take part in an international film festival. Why

not talk about that in English after today's Entertainment?!