BFI at The Big Chill Festival 2009

Following our music/film/live AV jamboree last year, we were delighted to be asked back to the Big Chill for the festival this year, so we're packing up our tents, sun cream and flip flops and heading to the beautiful environs of Eastnor Castle to present a brain nourishing selection of past, recent and future highlights from the BFI Southbank programme.

Taking the momentous 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing as our theme and throwing in a sprinkling of surprises, visual poetry and magic for good measure, we’re hoping to take the Chillers on a cosmic journey into Cinema.  Let us boldly go where no festival has gone before…

For the full festival programme and to book tickets, visit The Big Chill website. 

We have two pairs of tickets to give away for this year's festival - for your chance to win, simply email win@bfi.org.uk with 'Big Chill' in the subject header, together with your name and a contact phone number, by Fri 24 July.

Thursday 6 August: Castle Stage

British Sea Power Live: Man of Aran
Following a quite incredible show at BFI Southbank, we are thrilled to be bringing to the Big Chill the mighty British Sea Power. 

Infused with his feeling for man and nature, Robert Flaherty's remarkable film portrays the lives of a family of Aran Islanders and their struggle against the unrelenting forces of nature off the coast of Galway.  Rescoring films is nothing new but this is something special: the band have created an incredibly evocative and powerful soundtrack to bring this extraordinary film to life once again.

Friday 7 August: 20:00 – 21:45

BUG – The Horror of Music Video
BUG, the BFI Southbank’s hugely popular music video event, returns to the Big Chill for a particularly chilling special show – a blood-curdling big-screen scream-athon of the goriest, most horrifying, and monstrous vids from the annals of modern music video – from well-known favourites to rarely-seen gems.

Presented by top British music video director and horror fan Corin Hardy – The Horrors, appropriately, and The Prodigy are among Corin’s video credits – BUG – The Horror is going to be a monster.  Arrive early to avoid disappointment!

Friday 7 August: 22:15 – 23:00

Dark Fibre presents: Oli Sorenson and Dan Tait: THX 1138 Remixed
Dark Fibre is the BFI’s brand new audiovisual strand, dedicated to presenting live audiovisual performance and experimental film work. AV maestros Oli Sorenson and Dan Tait join forces to present a twisted take on this minimal sci fi cult classic.  Dan and Oli rework George Lucas’ dystopic vision of the future, introducing a dark electronic soundtrack with plenty of sub bass, sweeping synths, bleeps and beats.

Friday 7 August: 23:30 – 01:00

Dark Fibre presents: Howie B and Húbert Nói: Music for Astronauts and Cosmonauts
A very special festival exclusive premiere.  A stunning new high-definition experimental film work that acts as a kind of visual poem for the album of the same name created by producer and artist Howie B and Icelandic artist Húbert Nói.

Music for Astronauts and Cosmonauts is a real-time soundtrack, organised into four tracks - Morning, Day, Evening, Night - running for 90 minutes.  This is the time it takes to experience a full Earth orbit. Filmmaker Jake Martin has carefully crafted sequences from NASA's amazing film archive to mirror Howie’s and Húbert’s pulsing, mesmerising electronica.

The closest thing many of us will ever get to a truly cosmic voyage, strap yourselves in and enjoy the view...

Saturday 8 August: 01:15 – 02:15

Dark Fibre presents: D-Fuse: Endless Cities
An immersive live sonic cinema performance from AV pioneers D-Fuse. Continuing their exploration into the global urban landscape, ‘Endless Cities’ is a performance that draws upon previous project ‘Surface’, a survey of the rising metropolitan centres of East Asia and the Pacific Rim. With mesmerising high definition images and a rumbling live electronic score, D-Fuse present a shifting world in motion, and provoke us to consider the consequences of rapid urban growth, environmental sustainability and the human rights of those at the bottom of the social scale.

Saturday 8 August: 02:30 – 03:40

Moonwalk One
Less a documentary and more a poetic and philosophical time record of man’s first attempts to walk on another world.  Director Theo Kamecke's vision for the film - commissioned by NASA to cover their historic Apollo 11 moonshot - was to create something which would mark the historic, philosophical and epic nature of this greatest of endeavours. With an atmospheric original score by Charles Morrow and a moody narration by Laurence Luckinbill, Kamecke's doc has been described as perhaps the most significant time-capsule record of Apollo 11 ever made.

Saturday 8 August: 12:00 – 13:00

Lotte Reiniger: The Fairy Tale Films
An enchanting animated film collection, with wonderful music and charming narrations. Lotte Reiniger was one of the twentieth century's major animation artists, pioneering a unique and distinctive style of black and white silhouette animation in her interpretations of classic myths and fairy tales. Born in Berlin in 1899, Reiniger was captivated by shadow puppets from an early age. Though she initially studied acting with the theatre director Max Reinhardt, she became involved with the Berliner Institut für Kulturforschung, an experimental animation studio, while in her early 20s. There, she began turning her silhouette art, inspired by the shadow plays popular in China and Indonesia, into short films based on fairy tales, many from the Brothers Grimm.

A sprinkling of magic that will captivate Big Chillers and Little Chillers alike.

Saturday 8 August: 13:15 – 15:00

In The Shadow of the Moon
By turns poignant, emotive and surprisingly funny, this documentary comes highly recommended.  The 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon between 1968 and 1972 are the only human beings in history to have stood on another celestial body. With the exception of Neil Armstrong, In the Shadow of the Moon brings together all the surviving moon walkers and allows them to tell their story in their own words. This riveting testimony is interwoven with visually stunning archive material re-mastered from the original NASA footage, and the result is an intimate epic, vividly depicting an extraordinary era in American history.

Saturday 8 August: 15:15 – 16:15

onedotzero_adventures in motion
The BFI and visionary moving image maestros onedotzero, joined forces last year to present a positively triumphant celebration of moving image in all of its glorious forms with a five day festival at BFI Southbank and the BFI IMAX. As we build up towards onedotzero: adventures in motion 09, we present wavelength 08, an eye popping compilation programme of music videos from last year's festival, and a sneak preview of some of this year's selection.

Saturday 8 August: 16:30 – 18:00  

For All Mankind
For All Mankind was released on the 20th anniversary of the first moon landing in 1989. Set to a specially commissioned score by Brian Eno, it purports to show a single moon shot, although it is in fact a collage of NASA material from various missions. Reinert's film won several prizes and was Oscar-nominated in 1990. A work of extraordinary artistic, intellectual and emotional hold, For All Mankind has more in common with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Solaris than other films made about the moon landing. 

Sunday 9 August: 11:00 - 13:00

BFI Family Fun Day
Our flagship event for families that love film. Kids and parents are invited to put on their best moon boots and come down to join the fun day crew for workshops, screenings, competitions, music, and general small person oriented chaos!

Take one small step to the BFI's ‘On the Moon’ Funday Workshop: follow Wallace and Gromit on their first adventure to the moon, on the hunt for cheese and then create your own lunar landscape and bring it to life in an animation workshop. Celebrate the work of early film pioneer Georges Melies and create your own soundtrack to accompany these silent classics. An exciting hunt through the BFI archive has unearthed some well-buried surprises too, which will be rounded off with a trip to Button Moon, as well an opportunity to watch the The Clangers in all their glory.

Sunday 9 August: 13:30 - 15:30   

Dr Who: The Moonbase
CYBERMEN! Only the second monstrous adversaries to make a return, the Cybermen wreak havoc for the Doctor at a weather base on the moon, and their status as one of the Doctor’s arch enemies is set.

A mini serial within the Doctor Who series, Moonbase had for a long time attained the classic BBC status of ‘missing, believed wiped.’  Luckily for us two of the four episodes were found and are here for your viewing pleasure. And hey, we can fill you in on the rest of the story. Here’s hoping the missing episodes will, Tardis like, emerge from lost time, though probably from the back of a dusty cupboard rather than the far reaches of space.

+ Moonbase 3: Departure and Arrival
The opening episode of a soap-like drama which attempted to portray life in the claustrophobic confines of a lunar work station.

Sunday 9 August: 16:00 - 17:30

Three Miles North of Molkom
Special preview courtesy of Metrodome
Three miles north of Molkom, hidden deep in the lakeside forests of Sweden, lies Angsbacka, the home of the ‘No Mind’ festival, a 21st Century playground for adults. International festival participants are placed in "sharing groups" at random. This documentary follows one such group, formed of a Swedish Viking, a Finnish grandmother, a cynical Australian backpacking rugby coach, a hippie goat herder, an enigmatic beautiful blonde, a down to earth father and a Swedish star escaping the tabloids.  Firewalking, shamanism, tantric sex and a myriad of other experiences guide the participants towards enlightenment, love, loathing and themselves in this comedically framed documentary.