British films make a strong showing at this year's Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF, June 16 to 24). The seven films being screened are Wuthering Heights (2011), Fish Tank (2009), Another Year (2010), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), Nowhere Boy (2009) and My Week with Marilyn (2011) and I, Anna (2012).

Coveted award

Wuthering Heights is an adaptation of the famous book by Emily Brontë, while Fish Tank is a story about 15-year-old girl called Mia who has been excluded from school and ostracized by her friends. Everything changes after Mia's mother finds a new boyfriend called Connor whose presence marks a huge change in the family's life.

Both of these films are directed by Andrea Arnold, a 51-year-old independent filmmaker from Dartford in Kent who was previously an actress and began her directing career in 2003. Fish Tank premiered at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in 2009 where Arnold won the Jury Prize for the movie. Arnold also picked up the coveted British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for Outstanding British Film in 2010 for Fish Tank.

Nowhere Boy, directed by Sam Taylor Wood and My Week with Marilyn directed by Simon Curtis are both biographies of sorts about the late celebrities John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe. Nowhere Boy focuses on Lennon's adolescence and the birth of the pop group, The Beatles. From the perspective of Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn examines the tense relationship between the actors Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe while they were filming The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956.

Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh, is a saga about a middle-aged London couple, Tom and Gerri, their son Joe, and a middle-aged divorcee called Mary who is a friend of the family.

We Need To Talk About Kevin, directed by Lynne Ramsay, tells the story of a woman called Eva who attempts to come to terms with the crimes committed by her son.

In cooperation with the culture and education section of the British Consulate-General in China, Briony Hanson, the director of Film Arts Group at the British Council was one of the people who helped select this year's choice of British films.

She told the Global Times that representatives from SIFF first came to London in February this year, and were offered a selection of 11 British films that was later whittled down to six. 

Hanson said, "There is a big range of British films and British filmmakers. Through these films, we want to show realistic depictions of ordinary people in Britain, and to document important people in British history. These films are all suitable for adults and children. We have included filmmakers who have international reputations such as Mike Leigh who is a five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner. In fact he is the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes, for Secrets and Lies, and Venice, for Vera Drake."

Debut movie

Hanson said that I, Anna is the debut feature film from 40-year-old director Barnaby Southcombe. "Southcombe's mother, Charlotte Rampling, who stars in the film, is one of the most celebrated British movie actresses working in Europe today," Hanson said.

Besides these seven celebrated British films, several older films from Britain were also given a showing in Shanghai last week, as part of UK Now, an on-going festival of British arts and culture which is taking place in 17 Chinese cities until November. The movies are all restored versions of short films about Shanghai that were made between 1900 and 1930. Most of them were shot by independent British film production companies or European directors who were traveling in Shanghai at the time. Today, these films belong to the collection of the British Film Institute National Archive (BFINA), which was responsible for their restoration.

Last Friday, BFINA head curator Robin Baker was in Shanghai to attend a screening of some of these films at the Rockbund Art Museum. Most of the shorts feature street scenes and family handicrafts in the city. Baker told the Global Times that the oldest short film in their possession filmed in Shanghai is called Nanking Road (Nanjing Road) and was shot in 1901.