SIFF Profile: Helen Loveridge

What I did before: A degree in history left me ill-qualified for much at all, but after some mooching around, I decided I liked film better than anything - no longer true: I am much more interested in music now but do not want to  spoil that pleasure by seeking employment in that field - so I wrote to the British Film Institute and asked, "What have you got that I can do?" This led to a six-year gig as assistant to the Programme Director of the National Film Theatre / London Film Festival (and Hospitality Officer on top of that for the last three years). 

I saw thousands of films. You could not keep me out of the cinema, and I met hundreds of filmmakers. I was then offered a job with a sales agency in London, Jane Balfour Films. They had traditionally handled docs and current affairs, which I was not so interested in, but had also just picked up a handful of features by the likes of Juzo Itami and Hou Hsiao-hsien that I  recklessly thought would be fun to work with. So I took a 16-year diversion through international sales - including being co-founder of Fortissimo Film Sales in Amsterdam where I worked with the likes of Wong Kar-wai and Tian Zhuangzhuang - before quitting because I could not stand the way the business had been taken over by hype and pre-selling rather than allowing a good film to make its own way, which used to happen rather more often. 

Funnily enough, the last film I sold - Monsoon Wedding - was the most successful, and it was amusing that when I moved to Seattle you could not park in my neighborhood for all the people going to see it at the movie theater. I never intended to specialize in Asian cinema, by the way; it just worked out like that.

Why I do what I do: It allows me to do two of the things I like the most: To travel and see movies - and then also a little contentment when the audiences go for the films I have sometimes fought so hard to bring here.

Five favorite movies (in no particular order):

• Aguirre, Wrath of God (Werner Herzog).
• Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick).
• The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• High and Low (Akira Kurosawa).
• My Life as a Dog (Lasse Hallstrom).

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2004 4:33 AM