Editor

At 7pm on Friday 27th October, The Times BFI 50th London Film Festival will celebrate its jubilee year with ‘A Portrait of London’ - the largest live audiovisual free screening London’s Trafalgar Square has ever seen. Projected onto a 120 foot screen before Nelson’s column, it features writer/director/composer Mike Figgis mixing sound and moving image from some of London’s most exciting filmmakers, artists and music producers – creating an hour long spectacle to be enjoyed by Londoners and webcast to international audiences.

The Festival has commissioned director Mike Figgis, of Leaving Las Vegas and Timecode fame, to help commemorate its jubilee year with a unique, free event - celebrating the future of London’s film scene as a home to cutting edge talent. Employing filmmakers and artists to create their own “digital postcards” of the capital, Figgis has plucked some of London’s most prolific and revered names from the industry, including: John Boorman (The Tailor of Panama, Hope & Glory, Excalibur), Sophie Muller (promo director, Bjork & Blur music videos), Jes Benstock (shorts director, The Holocaust Tourist, Orders Of Love), Ngozi Onwurah (Shoot the Messenger) & Alwin Kuchler (cinematographer, Proof, Morvern Callar, The Mother), Sophie Fiennes (documentary maker) and Nick Knight (photographer).



In front of live and virtual audiences, Figgis will mix London-inspired digital images onto a 4-way split screen to a soundtrack created exclusively by music producers Roxbury (Goldfrapp, The Cure, Richard Ashcroft, UNKLE, Dido) and Figgis himself. A webcast of the event will be streamed live via www.tiscali.co.uk/portraits for audiences across Europe and for audiences as far as Russia, India and China.



Film Director, Mike Figgis said, “To explore and celebrate multi-cultural London in the context of film and film music in a one off public event has been an exciting challenge. I hope that A Portrait of London will be enjoyed as a homage to the city we all know as well as offering some more unexpected visions from the capital."



Artistic Director of The Times BFI 50th London Film Festival, Sandra Hebron commented: “We are very excited to be commissioning such an innovative event in order to mark the 50th Anniversary of The Times BFI London Film Festival. Under Mike Figgis’ expert direction, this highly original mix of sound and image from some of London’s most exciting talents offers a public celebration of our past, whilst looking toward the future of film making.”


About Mike Figgis:

Mike Figgis (Writer/Director/Composer) has roots in experimental theatre and music, which are just two primary influences that contribute to the creative vision in all of his feature films and documentaries. Figgis has emerged as a visionary filmmaker who thrives on taking artistic risks, although he has been at the helm of such ‘mainstream’ movies as Internal Affairs with Richard Gere and Andy Garcia, the British born filmmaker has exhibited his more eclectic personal style in such films as Stormy Monday and Liebestraum.

As a teenager, Figgis playing trumpet and guitar with various bands, one of which was an R&B group with Brian Ferry. In addition to forming his own theatre group, Mike has also directed feature length films, including: One Night Stand starring Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski and Robert Downey Jnr, The Loss of Sexual Innocence with Julian Sands and Saffron Burrows, as well as Timecode, a groundbreaking departure for Figgis, with a feature film shot entirely using four digital cameras in real time, featuring a host of acclaimed actors, including: Salma Hayek, Jeanne Triplehorn and Saffron Burrows.

In 1996 Figgis achieved international critical acclaim for his film Leaving Las Vegas, starring Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue, which he wrote, directed and scored. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (two for Figgis personally with both Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay but also for Best Actor and Best Actress), with Nicolas Cage winning Best Actor for his portrayal of the alcoholic screenwriter Ben Sanderson.