Tom Walls, Jeanne de Casalis, Nova Pilbeam, Glynis Johns
In 2023, BFI Southbank will host a major new festival, BFI Film on Film Festival, the first festival in the UK to be wholly dedicated to film, with every title screening from a film print preserved in the BFI National Archive – spanning formats including 16mm, 35mm and 70mm as well as rare nitrate. The festival is designed to deliver a unique, cinema-based experience enabling audiences to enjoy the physical materiality of film in all its glory, exploring its aesthetics and challenges – and celebrating the skills required to work with it, with expert voices from the BFI’s world-leading conservation and projection teams.
With that in mind, we’re delighted to present a screening of two WWII-era Christmas-themed treats that reflect the BFI National Archive’s work – This Man is Mine aka Christmas Weekend (1946) preceded by a seasonal short, Christmas Under Fire (1941). We’ll be joined by Robin Baker, Head Curator of the BFI National Archive, to discuss BFI Film on Film Festival and the power of film projection for audiences.
This Man is Mine aka Christmas Weekend
In this rarely screened comedy set during a wartime Christmas, the well-to-do Ferguson family extends a festive welcome to various strays.
Mrs Ferguson (the wonderfully eccentric Jeanne de Casalis) attempts to keep the household running, hampered by a Marxist char and a cook who pens lurid novels rather than preparing meals. Into this chaos comes a Canadian private (Hugh McDermott) who sows further discord as two eligible women (Pilbeam and Johns) vie for his attention.
Skilled director Marcel Varnel stirs this pot of quirky characters, seasons it with a dramatic mail van robbery, and serves up a seasonal domestic comedy to ward off the winter chill.