The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2020 - Issue 27

bite actor spotlight Upon receiving the award, the actress said, “The BFI is a fel- lowship to me. It is one that I was so proud to have joined years ago and to still be serving today. My freshest films are BFI films, my first films were BFI Films. I was a BFI baby and now a BFI grandmother forever.” Reflection of In Conversation with Tilda Swinton A day later, after Tilda received her BFI Fellowship award, she talked to film critic Mark Kermode about her career. In a con- versation that spans her over 30 years career, the actress talked about working on her best-loved films, including her early work with Derek Jarman, Sally Potter's Orlando , Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, Snowpiercer by director Bong Joon-ho and Michael Clayton, for which she won an Oscar. Tilda looked back on her wide-reaching career as a performer across independent and Hollywood cinema, as well as a produc- er, director and general ally of maverick free spirits everywhere. The event offered a glimpse into their intimate partnership as the two long-time co-conspirators and voracious cinephiles se- lected and explored personal favourite gems from throughout cinema’s history. When Swinton took the stage it was very clear that her star shines very brightly. She had an amazingly warm and inviting personality, her sense of humour and passion for her craft was transcending very vividly to the audience. In the middle of the table, stood very proudly the BFI fellowship award that Swinton and Kermode proudly showed off to the audience. During the Q&A they showed several clips from some of the many great movies that Tilda worked on over the years. It start- ed with a clip from Caravaggio (1985), which was her very first movie and to this day is very precious for the actress. The film is the fictionalised re-telling of the life of Baroque painter Michel- angelo Merisi da Caravaggio and one of his lovers, Lena which was Tilda’s role. She remembered an interesting story, behind the scenes of the movie: “They made it in unsound proof warehouses, after re- ceiving the funding from BFI, where they were building Canary Wharf, Limehouse, and there was a hammer going all day as they were shooting. And the person with a hammer was con- stantly asked to be quiet and was bribed with bottles of whisky. After failed attempts to keep it quiet on the set, Derek Jarman decided to make changes. After they finished filming, they went to Italy and gathered the modern eclectic wireless from the peo- ple passing on the street and that was a soundtrack of the film only because of that hammer operator who was building Canary Wharf.” In collaboration with the late Jarman, with whom she made sev- en feature films, Tilda shared the key elements that she learned from the director. The most important one was collective work- ing, which according to the actress he inherited from his idols and mentors and then encouraged other young artists to work Film - Only Lovers Left Alive