Pharell Williams ‘Piece By Piece’ gala disrupted by PETA in London

The 68th BFI London Film Festival came to a close last night, with the UK premiere of Piece by Piece, the LEGO biographical documentary / comedy directed by Morgan Neville, which follows the life and career of musician Pharrell Williams.

The closing night gala at the Royal Festival Hall was disrupted by a group of animal rights protesters representing activist group PETA. They unfurled a banner that read: “Pharrell: Stop Supporting Killing Animals For Fashion” – referring to the musician and director’s role as the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton.

“Shame on you, Pharrell. Animals are skinned alive and tortured,” one protester shouted from the balcony of the concert hall.

“Stop the torture, stop the pain, LVMH you are to blame,” they chanted. “Animals are not fabrics, they’re not handbags…Fashion is violence.”

Security escorted the protesters out of the auditorium, according to a representative for the British Film Institute. “We feel it was managed well and any attempt to remove them earlier would have exacerbated the problem,” the rep told Variety.

In a statement, PETA UK senior campaigns manager Kate Werner said: “While Pharrell’s life story is told in this navel-gazing film, animals are confined in filth on farms before their heads are bashed in and their skin is ripped off while they’re still conscious – all so pieces of their bodies can be made into Louis Vuitton’s fleeting fashion pieces.”

Werner added: “PETA is calling on Pharrell to use his power for good, stop being complicit in cruelty, and push Louis Vuitton into the 21st century by refusing to use wild-animal skins and fur.”

Williams responded by saying: “God bless you. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the changes that they see, they don’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of planning and we are working out those things. They wanted to be heard so we heard them.”

He continued: “That is not necessarily the way to do it, and sitting in my position, when I have conversations on behalf of organizations like that unbeknownst to them, they come out here and do themselves a disservice. But that’s OK, when that change comes, everybody in this room will remember that I told you, we are actually working on that. And if she would’ve just asked me, I would’ve told her. But instead, she wanted to repeat herself.”

The BFI London Film Festival ran from 9-20 October. The Australian stop-motion animation film Memoir of a Snail won the Best Film award in the official competition.

The film, which also won the Best Animated Cristal at the Annecy Festival in June, tells the tale of two separated twins dealing with the adversities of life in a small town.

This marks the first time a stop-motion film was given the top prize at the BFI London Film Festival.

The jury said of Adam Eliot’s film: “Our jury was incredibly moved by Adam Elliot’s ‘Memoir of a Snail,’ which is a singular achievement in filmmaking. Emotionally resonant and constantly surprising, Memoir tackles pertinent issues such as bullying, loneliness and grief head-on, creating a crucial and universal dialogue in a way that only animation can. The jury is delighted to recognise an animated film alongside its live-action peers.”

Rungano Nyoni’s Cannes hit On Becoming a Guinea Fowl was given a special mention, described as an “intricately crafted story brimming with imagination that dares to say the unsayable about a sexual predator in a close-knit Zambian community.”

Additional sources • Variety