Paneltastic

It actually happened and was a big success. Huge thanks to Shami, Clive Anderson, David Morrisey, Riz, Nick Clegg and Ken Loach for taking part. But most of all massive thanks to Claire Binns and Marc Allenby for all their help getting this event together and their continued support for the film.

Highlights of the evening were:

-Brian Haw's passionate and extended vocal outburst. I somehow supressed the urge to ask him to leave, as it would have been a bit of an own goal for the director to haul a protestor out of a cinema.
-Riz's handling of Brian's outburst. Perfectly done.
-Clive Anderson's quip about Shami's appearances on Question Time. Sparks flew.
-Nick Clegg's assertion that we couldn't have made Taking Liberties without the work of the Liberal Democrats. Nice try...
-Ken Loach calling the film "Brilliant". Smug to revel in this I know, but it is unlikely to happen again in my career so I'm making the most of it...

And as usual a lively discussion in the bar afterward. By all accounts most of the other previews also sold out... hopefully there are still some people left who want to see it this weekend.

One final preview on thursday at the Rich Mix Cinema in Shoreditch - still some tickets left... Book here

Mewanwhile reviews are coming in thick and fast:

4 Stars in Time Out
Film Exposed Review
Total Film

And a lively discussion on Radio 4.

Interesting to see how the debate centres around the Reichstag sequence and the possible Nazi comparison. For the sake of repeating ourselves:
-We know we break Goodwins law, but you can't tell the story of how we came to entrench our civil liberties after WWII without talking about the Nazis.
-We are NOT making a direct comparison between Blair and Hitler. To do so would be idiotic. We are, as Helena Kennedy pointed out, just showing people what's right at the bottom of the long slope that we are starting to slip down.
-We are well aware of the pitfalls in bringing Hitler and the nazis into a film, which is why we get them out of the way at the beginning and never refer to them again.
-The film does not in anyway infer that Bush and Blair are responsible for either 9/11 of 7/7, as these theories are clearly all poppycock. While it is more or less certain that the Nazis did start the Reichstag fire, we do not make reference to this in the film as it would, quite rightly, make the inference that the recent terrorist attrocities are in some way engineered by the US and UK Governments. We are quite proud of the fact that Taking Liberties is factually unassailable and the last thing we would want to do is give any credence to the array of conspiracy theories out there, that are long on exciting allegations but short on fact.

However it would appear that our fleeting mention of Nazis is going to be the source of heated debate for a while yet.