A guide to the best strand at this year's BFI London Film Festival.
We've teamed up with the 56th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express to bring you an awesome selection of music-inspired films and events spread out across the city from October 10-21.
To mark the tenth anniversary of Sheffield-based production company Warp Films, the Sonic Cinema strand will present a special screening of Shane Meadows' This is England, featuring for the first time a live score from composer Ludovico Einaudiard at NFT1 on Friday October 19.
A week earlier NFT1 hosts the premiere of Icelandic post-rock heroes Sigur Rós' The Valtari Mystery Film Experiment, in which a dozen filmmakers – including the likes of John Cameron Mitchell, Ramin Bahrani and Alma Har'el – were given the same budget and an open creative brief to interpret music from the band's latest LP Valtari. A number of videos from the series with be screened and John Best, the manager of Sigur Rós, and filmmakers Melika Bass, Alma Har’el, Clare Langan and Nick Abrahams will be in attendance to discuss the project following the screening.
There's also six new features to peruse; Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, about the cult legacy of '70s pop outfit Big Star; Good Vibrations, a dramatisation of the life and legend of Terri Hooley, Ulster's Godfather of Punk; Congolese street-kid fiction feature Kinshasa Kids, cultural documentary The Secret Disco Revolution, Violeta Went to Heaven, a portrait of Chilean folk singer-songwriter Violeta Parra; and last but certainly not least British director Mat Whitecross' follow up to Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Spike Island, a Stone Roses-era Mancunian coming-of-ager with big laughs and, of course, a cracking soundtrack.
Book your tickets now at whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff and we'll see you there!
