Francine Stock
Patron of The Festival of British Cinema
'Celebrating all things British'

After a film-going year dominated by Avatar, a 3-D blockbuster designed to sell around the world, it’s time to celebrate the homegrown variety and distinctive character of British film. Let’s applaud too the recent extraordinary growth in support for film societies and community cinemas. Despite sophisticated home entertainment and multiplex chains, we still yearn to watch together in small groups and discuss, argue or laugh about the film afterwards. Over the past few months, An Education, a British film set in 1961, has won numerous international awards. In Hay this year, you can see films actually made in that decade – from the fresh honesty of A Taste of Honey to the controversial drama Victim to the Beatles fantasy A Hard Day’s Night. There are echoes across time and place. Half a century ago, not long out of school, Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo worked for years on the cult film It Happened Here about resistance to an imagined Nazi occupation of Britain, some of it filmed not far from Hay. This autumn, production starts nearby on Resistance an adaptation of local author Owen Sheers’ novel on a similar theme. Kevin and Owen will exchange ideas and experiences. Local connections continue with archive material and with two directors, Justin Kerrigan and Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys, who searched for their antecedents in wildly contrasting ways and places (South Wales and Patagonia). Then there’s the latest film from the UK’s most intriguing director, Stephen Frears (whose studies of Britain run from My Beautiful Laundrette to The Queen) an adaptation of Posy Simmond’s hilarious satire on rural life, Tamara Drewe. Matthew Sweet reveals the riches of British silents and there’s a knock-out programme of rarely-seen short films with early works by Ridley Scott and Mike Leigh, alongside bold new talents and witty Aardman animation.