WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), dir Ingmar Bergman
THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925), dir Sergei Eisenstein
POINT BLANK (1967), dir John Boorman
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), dir Mel Brooks
I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE (1949), dir Howard Hawks
THE MILKY WAY (1968), dir Luis Buñuel
STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS (1939), dir Kenji Mizoguchi
M (1931), dir Fritz Lang
LA REGLE DU JEU (1939), dir Jean Renoir
THE GENERAL (1926), dir Buster Keaton
...And I could give you another 50. It was a habit of mine, the NFT. When I was young, I got a job at Screen on the Green selling tickets for the all-night shows. After that, sleepless, I'd go to my day job selling newspapers at Waterloo station, where I'd read all the film reviews. Then I'd go to the NFT for the early evening shows. It was completely insane but very much part of my film education.
The NFT was sometimes a little po-faced, unlike the Scala, which I ran for a while. I used to read the NFT programme religiously, and jealously, since it had the BFI archive to draw on and at the Scala I didn't. The NFT was, in fact, like a church, we took it that seriously. For film-makers it was absolutely crucial. It was able to show films that you'd never see anywhere else to tiny audiences. It was allowed to be experimental, which is very important. It covered every aspect of cinema, to the extent that you felt really disappointed if you missed something.
