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The Marrakech International Film Festival has unveiled the 10 cinema figures who will participate in its In Conversation With program at its 20th edition running from November 24 to December 2.

They comprise Australian actor Simon Baker, French director Bertrand Bonello, U.S. actor Willem Dafoe, Indian filmmaker and producer Anurag Kashyap; Japanese director Naomi Kawase; Danish-u.S. actor and director Viggo Mortensen; U.K. actor Tilda Swinton; and Russian director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen and Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaïdi, who will receive the festival’s honorary Étoile d’or prize this year, will also participate in the program.

Baker’s was seen most recently in Toronto title Limbo and Tribeca 2022 selection Blaze, with early features including L.A. Confidential (1997), David Frankel’s The Devil Wears Prada (2006), and J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call (2011), followed by hit series The Mentalist (2008–2015).

Bensaïdi’s first feature A Thousand Months world premiered...

by Cláudio Alves

Sandy Powell's career has been closely tied to queer artistry since its genesis. After completing her education, the costume designer soon started collaborating with multi-hyphenated gay icon Lindsay Kemp whose stage work she had long admired, and, later, her jump from theater to film would be predicated on another queer genius, Derek Jarman. They'd work on four projects – Caravaggio, The Last of England, Edward II, and Wittgenstein – and the costumer would continue, keeping his memory alive after the director's death in 1994. Since then, even as her profile grew into the mainstream, Powell remained faithful to the idea and ideals of queerness in cinema, often joining forces with artists under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, Todd Haynes most of all.

As Pride Month 2023 reaches its end, let's remember this Academy darlings' first brush with Oscar. It was in 1993 when Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando earned Sandy...

Katherine Matilda Swinton, better known as Tilda Swinton, is a renowned British actress known primarily for her distinct roles in numerous independent films and blockbusters. She is best known for her inspiring performance as a merciless corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton, where she received the prestigious honor of earning an Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Tilda Swinton Biography: Age, Early Life, Family, Education

Tilda Swinton was born on November 5, 1960 (Swinton: age 62) in London, England. Her parents are Judith Balfour and Sir John Swinton, the Laird of Kimmerghame House. Swinton also has three brothers, Alexander, William and James Swinton.

Growing up in an artistic and cultured home, Swinton had become immersed in a world of creativity and innovation from a young age. She embarked on a powerful journey through the arts until ultimately uncovering something that sparked her interest and excitement.

In an exclusive video from SXSW in March 2023, Swinton...

February, marking both Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, is the kind of stretch from which a programmer can mine plenty. Accordingly the Criterion Channel have oriented their next slate around both. The former is mostly noted in a series comprising numerous features and shorts: Shirley Clarke and William Greaves up to Ephraim Asili and Garrett Bradley, among them gems such as Varda’s Black Panthers and Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground; a six-film series on James Baldwin; and 10 works by Oscar Micheaux.

Meanwhile, the 23-film “All You Need Is Love” will cover the blinding romance of L’Atalante, the heartbreak of Happy Together, and youthful whimsy of Stolen Kisses; four Douglas Sirk rarities should leave their mark, but I’m perhaps most excited about three starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Perhaps more bracing are 12 movies by Derek Jarman and four by noir maestro Robert Siodmak. Also a major...

Now in its 35th year, the Teddy Awards are among the Berlinale’s most affectionately regarded institutions. Presented annually to standout LGBTQ-themed titles across the festival’s entire lineup, they have a looser, hipper, more inclusive reputation than other Berlin prizes: fittingly, they’re annually presented not at an exclusive black-tie affair, but a publicly accessible ceremony followed by an almighty dance-’til-dawn party.

Yet the Teddys’ prestige survives their informality. Surveying their list of past winners, it’s notable how many defining queer works have been recognized along the way: from Pedro Almodóvar’s “Law of Desire” to Cheryl Dunye’s “The Watermelon Woman,” from Derek Jarman’s “The Last of England” to John Cameron Mitchell’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” from Sebastian Lelio’s eventual Oscar-winner “A Fantastic Woman” to last year’s vibrantly intersectional “No Hard Feelings.”

As for which new film is going to join their ranks this year,...

Three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell is the rock star of costume designers, known for her eclectic and adventurous sense of style. Powell earned her cred with the breakout “Velvet Goldmine,” the 1998 musical drama from Todd Haynes, where she got to channel David Bowie by way of her pre-teen idol worship of glam icon Marc Bolan. But her previous work with Derek Jarman and Sally Potter (“Orlando”) showed flashes of her iconoclastic signature.

“It’s this mix of her punk nature and this instinctual approach she has,” said costume designer Christopher Peterson, who started with Powell as her assistant costumer 15 years ago, and recently co-designed “The Irishman” with his mentor. “We research what the period sillhouette is and she looks at it, and she keeps looking at it, until she decides, and then she pounces, and sometimes it’s the period sillhouette, absolutely textbook, and other times she flips it on its head,...

Tilda Swinton, the iconoclastic British actress and producer, is set to preside over the 18th edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival, succeeding to American director James Gray.

Swinton, who won an Oscar and a BAFTA award for best supporting actress for “Michael Clayton,” has been leading an eclectic acting career. She has collaborated with prominent directors from different countries, for instance Bong Joon Ho on “Snowpiercer,” and “Okja;” Lynn Ramsay on “We Need to Talk About Kevin;” Jim Jarmusch on “Broken Flowers,” “The Dead Don’t Die” and “Only Lovers Left Alive;” the Coen Brothers on “Hail, Caesar!” and “Burn After Reading;” Luca Guadagnino on “I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash” and “Suspiria;” and Wes Anderson on four films, including “Moonrise Kingdom” and the upcoming “The French Dispatch” which she recently wrapped shooting. She also starred in the Marvel Studios blockbuster “Doctor Strange.”

“It is my honour to serve...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrew Kötting's Edith Walks (2017) is playing June 29 - July 29, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.The faster we walk, the more ground we lose.—Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the TerritoryIf there's a single date in English history that most of the country's population would know, it's 1066: the Battle of Hastings. They would hazily recall from wooden modular classrooms, stifling on a warm summer's afternoon, as they gazed out at heat rising from the tarmac playground, the tale of King Harold II, his cross-country march to war, and the Norman Conquest of the Anglo-Saxon realm. Perhaps the image of Harold as depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, an arrow protruding from his eye, would emerge from the palimpsest of history and linger on the fringes of their memory. The memories are much more immediate and painful for Edith Swan-Neck,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)

Despite a loose script that justifies little, Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s follow-up feature to his glorious melodrama I Am Love is a sweaty, kinetic, dangerously unpredictable ride of a film. One is frustrated by the final stroke of genius that never came, but boy was it fun to spend two hours inside such a whirlwind of desires, mind games, delirious sights and sounds.

At this point, none of Tilda Swinton’s acting choices should surprise her fans. The British actress loves roles that are rich, weird and diverse. Still, it was a bit of a shock when Swinton signed on for Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” last year as The Ancient One, the mystical teacher who helps Benedict Cumberbatch’s sorcerer superhero come to grips with his powers. Swinton chose to join the McU because, she said, it would get movie-goers to do the thing she loves most: See films in the theater.

“I’m kind of a cinema nerd,” Swinton told IndieWire in a recent interview. “And anybody who is doing what Marvel’s doing to encourage people to get away from their large screens and their laptops and into big theaters and see cinema in a cinematic experience, it’s gonna have my vote.”

Read More: Tilda Swinton: ‘Doctor Strange’ Whitewashing...

UK film industry veteran was the founding CEO of British Screen and chairman of BAFTA; his credits included Comrades [pictured].

Respected UK producer and film industry figure Simon Relph has died at age 76.

The British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA), of which Relph was a former chairman, announced it was saddened to hear of his death.

We are deeply saddened to learn that filmmaker and former Chair of BAFTA Simon Relph has passed away pic.twitter.com/jNkg2XuUku

— BAFTA (@BAFTA) October 31, 2016

Relph was born into cinema. He was the son of the prolific art designer, producer and writer Michael Relph, best known for his long-time collaboration with UK director Basil Dearden, and grandson of the celebrated English actor George Relph, a star of the stage and big screen.

At the time of his birth in 1940, his father was an art director at Ealing Studios, an activity which would eventually expand into producing and some 30 credits including...

Former Eave and Channel 4 executive died unexpectedly on Thursday.

The international film industry is mourning the passing of Alan Fountain who died unexpectedly on Thursday aged 69.

He had recently served in various positions – from head of studies to president - at the European producers training initiative Eave since 2000.

Prior to joining Eave, Fountain had worked in the UK as a professor of film and television at Middlesex University as well as for Mondial Television & Mondial Online, Sheffield Hallam University, Channel 4 Television and the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival.

Fountain was the first commissioning editor for Independent Film and TV at Channel 4 between 1981-94, working on films including The Last of England and Ghost Dance.

In an obituary, his Eave colleagues wrote that Fountain’s “rich and varied career was dedicated to supporting independent voices from different regions of the world, empowering and encouraging producers, directors and writers to tell stories that not only affect...

Former Eave and Channel 4 died unexpectedly on Thursday.

The international film industry is mourning the passing of Alan Fountain who died unexpectedly on Thursday.

He had recently served in various positions – from head of studies to president - at the European producers training initiative Eave since 2000.

Prior to joining Eave, Fountain had worked in the UK as a professor of film and television at Middlesex University as well as for Mondial Television & Mondial Online, Sheffield Hallam University, Channel 4 Television and the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival.

Fountain was the first commissioning editor for Independent Film and TV at Channel 4 between 1981-94, working on films including The Last of England and Ghost Dance.

In an obituary, his Eave colleagues wrote that Fountain’s “rich and varied career was dedicated to supporting independent voices from different regions of the world, empowering and encouraging producers, directors and writers to tell stories that not only affect audiences but create...

Above: Italian 4-foglio for Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960); artist: Sandro Symeoni.

The two most popular posters—each with over 600 likes—that I have posted in the past three months on Movie Poster of the Day have been unfamiliar takes on very familiar movies. The stunning Italian 55" x 78" poster for Godard’s Breathless, sold by Posteritati this past fall, is strikingly different from the usual poster images of Belmondo and Seberg strolling the Champs-Elysée or smoking in bed. Instead, artist Sandro Symeoni adapts the climactic scene of the film, but gives it a much more noirish feel, with Belmondo’s petty criminal receding into the blackest of nights. Without looking at the names you’d be hard pressed to identify the film from the poster.

The Russian poster for Star Wars, below, created in 1990 for the first Russian release of the film, is even less easily identifiable: a colorful crayon-drawing...

Fire figures prominently in the passionate, furious films of Derek Jarman: the conflagrations that consume London streets in Jubilee (1978), the flares and torches held aloft in The Angelic Conversation (1985), the infernos that roar in The Last of England (1987), the flame-colored tresses of Tilda Swinton, who made her screen debut in Caravaggio (1986) and remained an indispensable collaborator until the director's death, at age 52, in 1994. BAMcinématek's complete Jarman retrospective — featuring all 11 of his features, several short- and medium-length works (many shot on Super 8), and music videos — provides a welcome, too-rare opportunity to marvel at the director's burning talent and inextinguishable energy. A pioneering force i...

Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead is potentially tricky, but one of the criteria I always use is Anthony Hopkins’s performance in Silence of the Lambs, a film in which he is considered a lead but appears only briefly; his character is an integral part of the story.

The criteria for this article is as follows: The director & actor team must have worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in a minimum of 2 must-see films.

One of the primary trends for the frequency of collaboration is the...

Our season of British cult classics gets off to an arty start with a duo of films about Francis Bacon and Caravaggio

Love Is the Devil, the 1998 film directed by John Maybury, is many things: the first serious cinematic study of the life and art of painter Francis Bacon, a tour de force performance by Derek Jacobi, an unholy convocation of YBAs (including Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Angus Fairhurst) filling in as background extras; and perhaps, most remarkably in hindsight, an early sighting of 007 himself, Daniel Craig. Craig is rather brilliant in Love Is the Devil, playing the troubled George Dyer, Bacon's petty-criminal lover, who met the artist after crashing through his roof while attempting a break-in, and who killed himself in 1971. You can't say Craig doesn't go all the way for his art: the film includes a jaw-dropping scene of him in the bath, entirely in the altogether.

Moviefone's Pick of the Week "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" What's It About? This documentary looks at Jiro Ono, a sushi chef in his mid-80s, who is regarded as the best in the world. See It Because: Ono is a fascinating character, and the movie's approach to his food preparation is meditative and hypnotic (plus, the film will make you really hungry). Moviefone's Blu-ray Pick of the Week "The Last Days of Disco" (Criterion Collection) What's It About? Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny star as two Ivy League graduates looking for love in New York, during disco's last moment in the sun. See It Because: Criterion is also releasing "Metropolitan" on Blu-ray today, but we're picking "Disco" as the one to see. The early '80s setting gives the film an exciting flavor, so if dialogue-heavy indies aren't really your thing, you can still give this one a shot. New...

Looking back at Derek Jarman’s 1987 experimental manifestation of the loss of traditional English culture, The Last of England, his creation remains an incredibly unconventional, but highly personal semi-narrative that cuts through a scorched Earth left behind by Margaret Thatcher and the AIDS epidemic. The film is lined with his thematic staples of explicit homoeroticism and the punk movement that he was so much a part of during the 70s. With help from his longtime on screen collaborators Tilda Swinton, Spencer Leigh and Nigel Terry, Jarman made a return to the Super 8 format for its low cost and political freedom, and with it found the format fitting of the kaleidoscopic nightmare he managed to mold. His often manically abrasive, sometimes hauntingly vexatious aesthetic serves an imperative purpose, but man, is it hard to watch.

We move through time at an expedient rate – actually, dizzying is more accurate. Nearly all...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 24, 2012

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Kino Lorber

Tilda Swinton brings her ethereal presence to The Last of England.

A highly stylized vision of 1980s Britain, the 1988 experimental cult drama The Last of England is one of the late British filmmaker Derek Jarman’s (Caravaggio) most personal films.

Tracing the decline and fall of Britain as seen from the vantage points of London and Belfast, Jarman creates a mosaic using old home movies, newly shot hand-held 8 millimeter photography, erotic imagery, scenes of war and urban decay, newsreel-style footage and a barrage of familiar music and street sounds. Edited together along with the nearly wordless presence of such performers as Tilda Swinton (The Man from London) and Matthew Hawkins, the overall effect is quite apocalyptic-looking.

Quite a powerful piece though obviously not for everyone, the unrated Last of England was first seen in the U.S. at the...

Tilda Swinton Academy Award-winning Actress Tilda Swinton, a potential Oscar 2012 nominee for We Need to Talk About Kevin, makes a fashion statement while attending the 2011 Governors Awards in the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland in Hollywood, on Saturday, November 12. [Photo: Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.] James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope, Darth Vader's voice in the the Star Wars movies) was a long-distance Honorary Oscar honoree, as he's co-starring with Vanessa Redgrave in Driving Miss Daisy on the London stage; veteran makeup artist Dick Smith (Taxi Driver, Death Becomes Her), however, was present at the ceremony to receive his Honorary Oscar. Oprah Winfrey, a 1985 Best Supporting Actress nominee for Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, was the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Tilda Swinton won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney. Other film credits include The Last of England, Orlando, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,...

Simon Fisher Turner was an actor, a punk rocker and a pop singer before he found his true calling as a composer of experimental soundtracks

He has had a 40-year career spanning music and film. But for millions, Simon Fisher Turner is an artist encountered only unconsciously, via a BBC 1 channel ident. His soundtrack of piano and voice accompanying a helicopter flying over the sea to land on Bishop's Rock lighthouse has featured heavily in the broadcaster's schedule since 2008. Yet if its ubiquity seems to taunt the relative obscurity of the composer, the aquatic element, at least, seems to be in keeping with his tastes. "I love being by the sea and around water," says Turner, who was brought up in Cornwall by an archaeologist mother and submariner father. It was while away with Hms Otter that Captain Turner bought his son a tape recorder and started a fascination with field recordings that still abides.

Back in 1987, the actor had to alternate between keeping her mouth dry and swigging lager. All for art, of course

Tilda Swinton, whose earliest London memory was of being denied an ice cream by her nanny in Kensington Gardens, was living out of a suitcase in Chelsea when I met her in late 1987.

"I'm a sponger, I'm afraid," she claimed over coffee and biscuits. She had three films out and her "one-man play" at Edinburgh had been a hit. She had long lustrous red hair and almost neon green eyes. The muse of Derek Jarman, that year she'd performed the final scene for his The Last of England, which "after a light lunch in Docklands", involved dancing beside a bonfire in a wedding dress. She'd then cut it apart with shears, torn off its rosebud and tried to eat it.

Swinton had also been in Jarman's section of the 10-director operatic movie Aria.

This is the Pure Movies review of Gandu (English title: Asshole) for the London Film Festival, reviewed by Garth Twa for Pure Movies. Asshole is directed by Kaushik Mukherjee and stars Anubrata, Joyraj and Rii. Is it, maybe, the watershed of India punk, an explosion of nihilism that will change a generation, like Jarman’s The Last of England or Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization? It doesn’t really confront or challenge stylistic clichés like those exuberant in-your-face films, but instead adopts them, as though this is an audition piece in order to get signed by a label. And although these kids have justification for being pissed off, this feels less authentically anarchic that it does just plain opportunistic. A review isn’t really necessary for Asshole, a new film (as I believe it’s be labelled) by Kaushik Mukherjee. A description will probably do the job.

Maddening, sexy, disorientating – the work of the late Derek Jarman is as breathtaking and relevant as it ever was

This year's Edinburgh film festival may have been discussed in tones usually reserved for particularly gloomy wakes, but in the name of karma it only seems fair to note what it's done right. So consider this a compliment on the decision to invite guest curator Gus Van Sant to programme a short season devoted to the late Derek Jarman. Because while there's a steady stream of interest in Jarman's work via the DVD arm of the British Film Institute, there's also the vague but unshakable feeling that his name now enters the world's conversations as much in connection with his wondrous Dungeness garden as his films.

Not to mention his posthumous place in the landscape of British cinema. As with so much of the eternal debate around Jarman, I can't escape...

Art house patrons first saw Tilda Swinton in a series of controversial works from gay British auteur Derek Jarman's in the late 80s and early 90s (he died in 1994). A much larger international audience followed with Orlando (1993). In the past decade, key roles in mainstream Hollywood efforts won the great Swinton plentiful new devotees.

Do you remember the first time you saw her onscreen? My first time was Edward II in 1992 and though I was impressed, I had no idea what marvels awaited in Orlando the next year...

Tilda Swinton in Posters...

Caravaggio (86, debut) | The Last of England (88) | Edward II (91)

Orlando (92) | Female Perversions (96) | Conceiving Ada (97)

The Beach (00)| The Deep End (01) | Teknolust (02)

Young Adam (03) | The Chronicles of Narnia (05) | Stephanie Daley (06)

Michael Clayton (07) | Julia (08) | I Am Love (10)

That's not the complete filmography but the lead roles and a few key / essential supporting gigs. There are many more smaller roles. She's not...

Tilda Swinton credits late British director Derek Jarman with helping her forge a successful acting career - because she would have quit film without his encouragement.

The pair became friends in 1985 at the casting call for his movie Caravaggio, and the Michael Clayton star is convinced the encounter changed her life.

She says, "If I hadn't met Derek, I wouldn't have carried on performing. I probably would have become a professional gambler.

"At the time, I was working the horses a bit. What he offered me was a home (in film). We didn't fit in. I knew I didn't want to be in a corset in Merchant Ivory Films."

Swinton and Jarman collaborated on a number of films together, including War Requiem and The Last of England, before his death in 1994.

What I love about this new poster for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) is not just its gorgeous typography, but also how it celebrates its lead actress, the incomparable Tilda Swinton. In the film, which premiered at Venice and Sundance and opens in the U.S. in June, Swinton plays a Russian woman married into a rich Milanese family who embarks upon a tempestuous affair with her son’s business partner. In the UK quad poster Swinton’s co-stars (including Barry Lyndon’s Marisa Berenson) have been turned into grey statues, like characters in a Roy Andersson film, while Swinton is suitably vivid in pink.

Ever since she pirouetted to the wails of Diamanda Galas, tearing furiously at her wedding dress and running with scissors, in Derek Jarman’s masterpiece The Last of England (1988), Swinton has been a constantly arresting presence in film. Furiously intelligent and a restlessly curious human being,...