SUBMISSION 21
Memorandum submitted by Mr Asif Kapadia
I can still remember the experience of seeing
Hitchcock's Vertigo at the NFT when a student. I also recall
the utter shock and tension as the silent end credits rolled after
a screening of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs whilst it was
still banned for general release. The bfi offered me my
first chance to see the films of Kurosawa, Bergman, Leone, Mizoguchi
and Ray amongst many others; it has given me the chance to see
and hear directors, composers, and writers talk about the craft
of film-making.
As a lover of film, and world cinema in particular,
the British Film Institute and the National Film Theatre are the
main bodies, alongside the London Film Festival, that have enabled
me to see cinema classics on the big screen, as they were intended
to be seen.
While studying for my Film degree at the University
of Westminster, I regularly used the bfi library to pull
me through my essay writing and particularly my thesis.
The UK is one of the leading countries in the
world of cinema, but we fall well behind when it comes to funding.
We need to back our film-makers, and to back our cultural institutions.
The UK needs more cinemas, which can run in parallel to the multiplexes;
cinemas, which cater for the huge audience desperate to see the
intelligent, challenging, ground-breaking, rare, wonderful movies
that are being made here in the UK and around the world both past
and present.
The bfi is a vital, world renowned, cultural
resource that specifically deals with the one true art form of
the twentieth century. We should cherish and protect it and be
proud of what it does for cinema in this country and around the
world.
28 February 2003
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