The Londoner: Bitch bust-up hounds the BFI

BFI accused of ignoring the concerns of hundreds of academics/ Rodent problem at Westminster... and rats and mice, too/ Damien Hirst badmouths Brexit/ Pure poetry for Kate Moss and Bella Freud 
Under fire: Amanda Nevill, CEO of BFI
Dave Benett/Getty Images
2 May 2019

The British Film Institute has come under fire for its forthcoming season, Playing the Bitch, following accusations that it has effectively ignored film critics who argue that it is sexist and features no women directors. The BFI is hosting the summer programme of what it calls “films and events dedicated to tough, difficult women who use everything at their disposal to get their way”.

“The idea of having this season when zero feminist groundwork has been laid is shocking,” Daniella Shreir, editor of feminist film journal Another Gaze, said. “They didn’t listen to 300 people of all genders from all areas of the film world,” she added to The Londoner. Even the description of the programme — which will feature Robin Wright in her role as Claire Underwood in House of Cards — has been beset by controversy.

When announced last year, it was given the working title “Bitches”. An open letter sent in December to the BFI, which is run by Amanda Nevill, was signed by hundreds of academics and film critics arguing that “as framed, the series uncritically parrots rather than questions the misogynist logics that inform so much Hollywood cinema”.

After months of discussion, the BFI changed the name and agreed to host a special event: “The Hot Take: The B Word discussion”, which promises to feature proponents on “both sides of the argument”. Yesterday, Anna Bogutskaya, the event’s organiser, defended herself in an article on the BFI website.

“I realise the word ‘bitch’ is offensive to many people,” she wrote, “but it is perhaps the most powerful gendered word for a powerful gendered character.”

Critics deride this view. “It’s made my blood boil,” wrote one. Shreir said the lack of female directors was a problem: “How can it be expansive given the current climate if there are no other voices than male or Anglo-male?”

The BFI said in a statement: “This is not about who or how the performances are directed but how the female actors themselves have specifically taken control of their relationship with the audience.”

Taking the Mickey

A different sort of rebate: Liz Truss
Getty Images

Westminster’s rodent problem is out of control. After Cabinet minister Liz Truss found a note on her office saying it had been “re-baited for mice infestation”, Robert Halfon MP reports that mice have eaten through a box of tea in his (“I walked into my office and my team were standing on tables screaming”). Thangam Debbonaire MP adds that hers are “scampering around and having discos” and The Londoner found one dead under our own lobby desk. Spending on pest control in Parliament in the past five years has reached £500,000.

When will these rodents flee the sinking ships?

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Jess Phillips MP gives short shrift to Gavin Williamson’s declarations of innocence. She tweeted: “Just so we are clear, swearing on your kids’ lives means absolutely naff all,” adding it was like “swearing on the power of Greyskull or saying cross my heart and hope to die”.

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Musician Moby is enchanted with notable primatologist Jane Goodall. Describing her as “the most perfect woman: beautiful, erudite, vegan, and fluent in gorilla”, he was quickly rendered “almost catatonic with starstruckedness” during brunch at Leonardo DiCaprio’s LA home. “I like to think I spoke in complete, possibly even coherent, sentences,” he writes in The Spectator. “But I might have just drooled and mumbled.”

Freud gathers Moss for a poetic soirée

Poetry pals: Kate Moss and Bella Freud
Dave Benett/Getty Images

Bella Freud opened her Chiltern Street shop last night for an evening of poetry, DJ sets and rosemary cocktails. Actor-turned-producer Gala Gordon turned up in silver and Lady Mary Charteris shimmered in a blue silk suit. Kate Moss sipped (rosemary) water while she chatted to socialite Dan Macmillan.

Stylist Sophia Hesketh was also in attendance, as was Bake Off host and comedian Noel Fielding.

Meanwhile, at the Groucho, Jo Wood launched her new podcast, Alien Nation with Jo Wood, with friends including Sadie Frost. Wood explained that her fascination with aliens started at the age of 12, when she spotted her dad reading a magazine article called “Is God an astronaut?” “I’m fascinated by the universe and by space,” she said.

SW1A

What news of Cronus, sacked Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson’s tarantula? “[He’s] enjoying a rest in south Staffordshire,” says Barry Bond, Williamson’s constituency chairman. “He was a bit under the weather — I think he’d been given some locusts to eat, and he didn’t seem too happy.”

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The Conservatives’ message for the local elections can be reduced to one slogan — as Tobias Ellwood points out — “It’s not about BREXIT!” He repeats this three times in a 90-second video posted today. But perhaps Antoinette Sandbach puts it most succintly: “It’s bins,” she says. “Not Brexit.”

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The ERG’s Steve Baker MP doesn’t refer to himself as “the Brexit hardman” for nothing. Yesterday the MP for Wycombe re-released his 2017 “Five top tips to get and stay fit”: “Have a reason, choose a goal, eat less, exercise more” and “don’t stop”. A clunking political metaphor?

Politicians? They’re muppets, says Hirst

"Brexit's a joke": Damien Hirst
David Becker/WireImage

Artist Damien Hirst, who campaigned for Remain in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, hasn’t changed his mind.

“Brexit’s a joke, everything’s a joke, people in power are a joke,” he tells The Art Newspaper.

“We’ve got muppets in the government falling over each other, there’s no logic whatsoever. I’ve never thought the people in power are idiots to the level they are now.”

Hirst, who’s valued at £215 million, also declares he is bewildered by art’s spiralling value. “If someone wanted to pay the same for a single painting of mine as they would for a Picasso, I’d be worried.”

Quote of the Day

‘I do like it when women are in senior positions’

Theresa May addresses a select committee hours before sacking Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and replacing him with Penny Mordaunt

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