A curious coincidence seems to have confined me, so far in unseasonal 2012, to attending international film festivals in cities beginning with a B!  This is not to say that any one of them is a B-Festival (we know, pace F.I.A.P.F., that the world of 613-4,000 festivals is not really divided into 'A' category and 'B' category events) but even though --for the first time-- I missed the Berlinale, for a variety of reasons (though I did manage to preview it on BBC World Service Radio from London, and select some of its subsequent award-winners, regardless!), see how these locations chime...

Belgrade.....Bucurest....Byzantium (well that was how Istanbul used to be called)..and -perhaps the most exotic of all - Bradford. Not to mention the 10th Birthday of Kinoteka, the splendid celebration of Polish cinema in London and elsewhere, that culminated with a film and music event in the Barbican, our medieval answer to the Centre Pompidou.

And the highlight, in unsunny Yorkshire, at the 18th BIFF was the Lifetime Award, conversazione, and screen tribute to Barbara Windsor. But enough of this alphabet soupery, let me file my reports....as best I can bientot !