London Film Festival

The second Thursday of the 50th Times BFI London Film Festival began promisingly with my first if brief visit to the Film-makers' Breakfasts held some mornings in the festival hotel, the St James Sofitel. a converted bank in the heart of clubland.In the small oak- panelled bar, directors du jour were already seated at 9.30am for their 90-minute rounds of interviews, cheerily marshalled by perky PRs.I managed a short but pleasant interview(see it here later!) with Denmark's Pernille Fischer Christensen, who admitted that in spite of her triumph at the Berlinale in February,this was only her third festival visit."But the audiences are very enthusiastic in London",she insisted, as I made my excuses to rush off to the-thankfully nearby - long-ago-scheduled-for-10 am Press Screening of a rather different debut feature, BOBBY.Vaulting into the foyer of the Odeon West End with minutes to spare,what do I find but a bemused line of fellow-accreditees being informed by a hapless member of the Festival PR team that-for some unexplained reason-the distributors had suddenly decided,hier, to retime the start of the official press screening to 9.30am. The change had been notified by e-mail and on the website. As I do not spend all my nights or early mornings glued to a PC,I knew this not and my morning was ruined.It certainly keeps us on our toes, if not on our fingers.

But at least ,while munching on a Danish pastry waiting for my Danish director ,I had had the pleasure of seeing Don Boyd, one of Britain 's most original producer-directors, who had somehow insinuated himself into the petit dejeuner de la presse.And ,indeed ,the incidental pleasures at this least festive of the world's film festivals is spotting fellow film-makers mingle in at screenings.The sparsely-attended (public)matinee last week of the rather horrible Hungarian film TAXIDERMIA was enlivened by the adjacent chuckles of our national directing treasure Mike Leigh, while the similarly scantily-attended matinee of DAS FRAULEIN- with both Swiss director Andrea Staka and Croatian cameraman present onstage -was viewed by none other than Stephen Frears- clearly a question of quality not quantity- if numerically far from the 3000-odd paying public who first saw the film at Locarno where it won several, including the top,award in a rather hotter August.Some day my prints will come on time.

Phillip Bergson