London Film Festival

The London Film Festival hasn't featured quite so prominently in the Border Crossings psyche this year as it did for the last two - but at least I was here for some of it. Next year I'll be in San Francisco for the whole of October. It's always a rich and fascinating festival, and a source of new ideas. This year I've been looking for films which I might include in the next Origins programme, which we're developing for 2011, and for a sense of exciting things happening around the world! I was very sad to miss Pudana: Last of the Line, which deals with indigenous people from Siberia and the boarding schools, and Southern District, just because it's from Bolivia, where so much exciting indigenous thought is developing. The other film from Latin America which sounded very relevant to Origins, Even the Rain, got withdrawn from the Festival.... But I did see the wonderful Patagonia, which is an indigenous film from Wales, made largely in Welsh, and dealing with the presence in Argentina of a Welsh-speaking community. This suggested new ways in which the next Festival might start to look at the indigeniety question, and engage with it through communities who are actually here right now.

I also saw Heartbeats from Quebec, Godard's beautiful but impenetrable Film Socialisme, and a little dose of China (well, Taiwan) to re-charge my Oriental batteries: When Love Comes by Chang Tso-Chi. This film's gentle games with family and culture struck a lot of chords.