WHEN YOU THINK of characters from British cinema, you might imagine the fumbling Hugh Grant, Harry Potter eccentrics or suave men with stiff upper lips.
The British have routinely been portrayed in films as awkward, inhibited by social mores and downright difficult to get close to. Not for them the high spirits of the Spanish characters that populate Pedro Almodovar films or the innate American confidence shown by Steven Spielberg, although some of the neurotic New Yorkers depicted by Woody Allen come close.
It was to counter this characterisation that David Foster, assistant director for arts and science at the British Council, planned the organisation's 2004 film festival and came up with the title Intimacy in the UK Cinema.
'I picked the theme because it challenges a certain view of what it means to be British,' Foster says. The council's regular overseas surveys about the British character repeatedly found that people regarded Brits as 'polite, reserved and, on the more negative side, cold', he says.
Foster's programme is his first attempt at organising the council's biennial film festival. He's brought together an esoteric selection of new non-mainstream films, boasting such big names as Ewan McGregor, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi and Tilda Swinton.
While there's the deserved inclusion of Mike Leigh's Secrets And Lies, you'd have to be a film buff to have heard of A Revengers Tragedy. Or of Morvern Callar and its star Samantha Morton, whose performance as a woman reacting to her boyfriend's suicide caused a stir in UK independent film circles. Foster has also taken a bold step in introducing a retrospective on the highly influential but controversial director Derek Jarman, who died 10 years ago.