Leviathan wins top prize in London ahead of ADFF screening

Plus: George Lucas reveals details of art and movie-memorabilia museum; Martin Sheen launches conservation ship named in his honour; Dia Mirza marries Sahil Sangha; Bollywood stars perform at concert to help flood victims; sphinxes found in California desert; Nashville hall of famer dies

The Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev with the Best Film award he received at the BFI London Film Festival for Leviathan. Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images for BFI

The Russian film Leviathan, which will screen at the 2014 Abu Dhabi Film Festival, has won the top prize at the London Film Festival.

The tragic satire of small-town corruption, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, was named Best Film. The film, which also took the screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was praised for its “grandeur and themes” by a jury that included Scottish actor James McAvoy and producer Jeremy Thomas.

Movies about corruption, gang violence, honour killing and war dominated the prizes as the English festival recognised cinema that confronts the harsh realities of our world.

The Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy won the first-feature award for The Tribe, a teen-gang drama set at a school for the deaf and performed entirely in sign language, without subtitles.

Actress Sameena Jabeen Ahmed was named best British newcomer for her performance as a British-Pakistani teenager on the run from her family in Catch Me Daddy.

The documentary prize went to Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait, a searing look at war's brutality by the Paris-based director Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan, an schoolteacher who filmed life in the besieged city of Homs.

The director Stephen Frears was awarded the British Film Institute’s Fellowship during Saturday’s ceremony at London’s 17th-century Banqueting House.

The 58th London festival opened on October 8 with a screening of The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the Second World War codebreaker Alan Turing. It wrapped up on October 19 with another Second World War movie, Fury, starring Brad Pitt as a hard-bitten tank commander in the war's final weeks.

Catch Leviathan at ADFF on October 29 at 6.15pm and October 31 at 6pm. Both screenings are at Vox cinemas at Marina Mall.

George Lucas reveals details of movie-art museum

George Lucas has filled in some details about his planned art and movie-memorabilia museum, including how the California native settled on Chicago as a location instead of San Francisco.

It was his wife's idea. The Star Wars creator told the Chicago Ideas Week forum that Mellody Hobson, a Chicago native and prominent businesswoman, had had enough after four years of what he described as "doodling around" by San Francisco.

“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to the [Chicago] mayor. I’m sure he’ll love it,” she told him. And she was right. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has publicly embraced the idea, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is set to take its place in the Museum Campus on the city’s lakefront.

The filmmaker announced in June that he had picked Chicago. At the forum this week, he described what the museum will look like.

“It’s going to be organic architecture, connected to the ground. And it will look like a living thing,” he told interviewer Charlie Rose at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.

Lucas said he wanted a showcase for his collection of popular art, including illustrations by Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish and N C Wyeth as well as works by Lucas’s visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, and other companies.

The museum will also feature art linked to film and digital media, as well as a theatre to screen films and host lectures and workshops.

“Illustrative art and narrative art has been short-shrifted,” he said. “Critics weren’t dealing with narrative art. They were interested in modern.”

The city will provide the land, but Lucas said he would bankroll the building and endowment to maintain it.

“You can afford a museum?” Rose asked.

“Yeah, I can,” Lucas answered.

Martin Sheen launches conservation ship named in his honour

The award-winning actor Martin Sheen, star of Apocaplypse Now and TV political drama The West Wing, teamed up with conservation group Sea Shepherd on Saturday to launch a new ship named in his honour.

The captain of the Martin Sheen cracked a bottle over the side of the research vessel, which will focus on battling maritime litter such as plastics in the world's oceans.

“Plastic has become the deadliest predator of the sea,” the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning actor told a crowd at the boat-christening ceremony in Marina Del Rey, outside of Los Angeles. “If we fail to clean up the plastic mess that humans have made and stop the pollution ... we face the potential extinction of many species of sea­ life.”

The French captain of the boat told how its six crew had encountered masses of plastic debris in the middle of the Pacific, during their two-week journey from Hawaii to Los Angeles for the launch.

“It was very sad to see that even in the most remote place far away from any human beings, you can find so much pollution,” said captain Oona Layolle, a veteran of five Sea Shepherd campaigns.

Sheen, 74, said more than a million birds are believed to die each year from plastic pollution.

“Cleaning up the oceans is a major environmental imperative of our time ... this vessel has a very specific mission and I cannot tell you how proud I am to be associated with it,” he added.

Bollywood stars perform at concert to help flood victims

Aamir Khan, Sushant Singh Raj­put and Parineeti Chopra were among the Bollywood stars who joined forces for a concert in New Delhi to raise funds for the flood victims of Kashmir, Assam and Visakhapatnam.

The HUM HAIN… Umeed-e-Kashmir concert on Saturday, hosted by the actors Ravi Dubey and Samir Kochhar, featured performances by actors such as Aditi Rao Hydari, Parineeti, Sushant and Neha Dhupia. There were also songs from Shaan, Daler Mehndi, Aditi Singh Sharma and Harshdeep Kaur. Actor-singer-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar also performed songs from his movie Rock On!!.

The concert will be broadcast on 35 Zee channels on October 26. Zee Marathi, Zee Kannada and Zee Telugu will show the event on November 2.

Dia Mirza marries Sahil Sangha

Looking fabulous in a Ritu Kumar-designed green and beige ensemble, actress Dia Mirza married Sahil Sangha in New Delhi on October 18.

The couple, who got engaged in New York this year, had an Arya Samaj wedding ceremony at a farmhouse in Ghitorni. If Dia looked royal in Kumar’s creation, the groom looked dapper in a Raghavendra Rathore-designed outfit.

Lara Dutta, Sushmita Sen Cyrus, Sahukar and Zayed Khan were among the celebrities who attended the wedding.

Sphinxes found in California desert

Archaeologists working in the sand dunes along the central California coast are digging up ancient sphinxes – made of plaster.

More than 90 years ago, legendary filmmaker Cecile B DeMille built 21 giant sphinxes and an 800-foot-wide temple as a set for his classic silent movie The Ten Commandments. In 1923, when filming was complete, he abandoned them among the sands of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes in Santa Barbara County.

Now, archaeologists are digging for the fragile plaster sphinxes and this week began excavations on one that they hope will eventually go on display at the nearby Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center, which has raised US$120,000 (Dh440,000) for the dig.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of site,” said M Colleen Hamilton, a senior historical archaeologist with Applied EarthWorks and the project director for the excavation. “I’ve worked on sites all over the country, and I think this one could only happen in California.”

Crews began digging in 2012 and found one sphinx but money for the project ran out. Parts of that sphinx’s head are on display at the Dunes Center.

When they returned this year for the body, they found the wind had shifted the sand, exposing the plaster and damaging it beyond repair. But the wind had also revealed a hint of the foot and leg of another sphinx.

Residents of Guadalupe, a small farming community, left the set alone for decades out of respect, said Shirley Boydstun, 86, a member of the Rancho de Guadalupe Historical Society.

“The old-timers have always known it was out there,” she said.

Nashville hall of famer dies

Nashville songwriter and Hall of Famer Paul Craft died on Saturday at the age of 76, after suffering from years of deteriorating health.

He wrote the lyrics to songs made famous by the likes of Ray Stevens, Mark Chesnutt, Alison Krauss, The Eagles and Linda Ronstadt.

He was inducted this month into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame after being nominated numerous times over the years.

Among his most well-known songs were Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life; Dropkick Me, Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life); Brother Jukebox; and It's Me Again, Margaret, one of Stevens's signature songs.