Greetings from London
Ever since I was old enough to collect money – and propel myself by means other than bipedalism – I have been a passionate filmgoer. Those early years were filled with the sort of vacuous Hollywood tripe that I now rail against; but with age my passion grew and became more refined.
As a member of the British middle classes my ascent into the chrysalis of higher education was inevitable; but rather than using this time to build up a sound foundation for my CV, I decided to study the cinema in the hope that I might accidentally learn something about myself along the way. I emerged, three years older, no longer a caterpillar but hardly a butterfly, with my passion for the cinema now forever etched into the fabric of my life. There was no turning back… I was a cineaste at last.
But it is not easy being a true cineaste in England, as part of a generation that refuses to relate to the cinema. Here, young cultured urbanites – people who love music and literature and even drag themselves to the occasional art exhibition – very rarely bother to visit our wonderful independent cinemas, and I think part of the problem is the state of our film journalism. The nation’s leading film magazines, Total Film and Empire, seem to spend more time and money on their glossy covers than on the content within, and their cosy relationships with the Hollywood studios nullifies their reviews altogether. The same can be said of many of our newspapers, and so I believe the time has come for a new era of film journalists to broadcast their passion for great cinema to the rest of their generation. The revolution has already begun, with magazines like Little White Lies, Electric Sheep, and Fan The Fire (for which I am a feature writer) attempting to combine interesting, cine-literate film journalism with a youth-culture aesthetic.
Attending the Berlinale Talent Campus is a great honour for me; and I hope that it will reinforce my position as a genuine cineaste with an important opinion on films. While I welcome the tidal wave of amateur film critics who choose to broadcast their views online, I think it is absolutely necessary to retain a class of ‘professional’ film journalists who have dedicated their lives, not just their Friday evenings, to exploring the boundless, coruscating wonders of the cinema. I am young and I want to relate to my generation and persuade them to watch more interesting films, but I want to do this from the position of a respected film journalist, not just another Londoner with a blog.
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