Amanda Nevill and Sandra Hebron host today's London Film Festival Press Launch at focal London cinema Odeon Leicester Square.

Premier PR organises the event with a firm emphasis on priorities: fresh croissants and pain-au-chocolats; coffee, tea, orange juice; mineral water at every seat; emergency bar of Green & Black's chocolate on the way out. It's cruel to say that Green & Black's now belongs to American processed-cheese company Kraft, so no-one does. At the 2009 London Film Festival Press Launch Amanda Nevill announced the probable forthcoming merger of the BFI with the UK Film Council. Today she speaks in the wake of the UK Government's recent announcement that (a) the UK Film Council is to be closed (b) funding of the arts is being slashed (c) so is everything else. There's a delicate tightrope to be walked here, a thin tightrope and a long one, stretched over a dizzily deep ravine. In front of a particularly difficult audience. There's a susurrus as Guardian readers congratulate themselves on visualising this tightrope as the scene in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra when the devil rushes out at the moment the acrobat gets halfway across the wire.

It's an 800 strong-audience of mixed preoccupations. There are commercial film business people (tax relief, sod the arts); auteurs (self); independent film makers (self-abuse); Government civil servants from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS] (job cuts, going on strike); sponsors (sainthood); media (sex, chocolate, drink); and both readers of The Independent. How to pacify everyone? How to satisfy every camp (and this is prime, British camp)?

Amanda Nevill rises flawlessly to the occasion. Being both pretty and elegant - smart and formal in tailored black jacket and trousers with open-necked white shirt and high-heeled black patent shoes - does no harm in delivering a difficult speech in difficult times, but it's the carefully-stranded content and diplomatic structure of what she says that make it a masterpiece. The technical problem is: how to be gung-ho for sponsors; big-up film quality for film-goers and profit for financiers; be sad about the Film Council for people who quite liked it, glad about it for everyone else; be sackcloth-ish about arts cuts for artists, blow a mild raspberry about them for people who think artists should be first in the tumbril, and have brought their own knitting needles?

She welcomes (the BFI's political masters) the DCMS and each of the sponsors - 'More ambitions and big ideas need generous partners' - by name. Instead of skirting round the question of cuts she meets it head on. She makes the point (paraphrased here) that cuts are across every aspect of life; that the arts must take their place in this, and that the point is to concentrate on going ahead in a brand new landscape.

Lots of leaders of the subsidised arts have wrung their (subsidised) hands in the press (for months, though to some it may feel like years) as if arts cuts were tearing babies from breasts and trampling on them (the babies). Unfortunately, this can turn people away who might otherwise have listened - people more worried about hospitals closing. Amanda Nevill's direct approach of putting the arts in the context of national priorities - while making clear politely that they are one - and focussing on getting on with what exists rather than what might have existed, feels like crisp, fresh air.

Amanda Nevill points out that the relevant Government minister has said that tax breaks for the film industry are to be kept. She says that Britain is well-placed (for film-making). There isn't time to mourn the old era. The entire business of film needs creativity at its root. Film needs public money, nurturing the new. Patriotism features here, as she emphasise 'Solid British excellence'. The aim is (encouraging) an environment 'where creativity is feted, and where the unexpected happens regularly. The BFI London Film Festival is 'a moment when we come together to shout about film'.

The London Film Festival's delightful artistic director Sandra Hebron gives a warm and colourful speech about the content of this year's festival. She concludes by introducing a clip reel of extracts from 41 films - a bit over half a minute each. (Main link for each film is to Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) page for film; LFF link is to page on London Film Festival 2010 website): Never Let Me Go (2010) (LFF), 127 Hours (2010) (LFF), The King's Speech (2010) (LFF), Another Year (2010) (LFF), Submarine (2010) (LFF), The First Grader (2010) (LFF), También La Lluvia (Even The Rain) (2010) (LFF), Conviction (2010) (LFF), En Ganske Snill Mann (A Somewhat Gentle Man) (2010) (LFF), The Kids Are All Right (2010) (LFF), Archipelago (2010) (LFF), Black Swan (2010) (LFF), Meek's Cutoff (2010) (LFF), Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) (2010) (LFF), Miral (2010) (LFF), Route Irish (2010) (LFF), The Nine Muses (2010) (LFF), West Is West (2010) (LFF), Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats) (2010) (LFF), Sans Queue Ni Tête (Special Treatment) (2010) (LFF), Octubre (October) (2010) (LFF), Le Quattro Volte (2010) (LFF), Fløjteløs (Whistleless) (2010) (LFF), Benda Bilili! (2010) (LFF), Lemmy (2010) (LFF), Howl (2010) (LFF), It's Kind Of A Funny Story (2010) (LFF), Un Poison Violent (Love Like Poison) (2010) (LFF), Africa United (2010) (LFF), Pink Saris (2010) (LFF), The Arbor (2010) (LFF), Biutiful (2010) (LFF), Harud (Autumn) (2010) (LFF), The Great White Silence (1914) (LFF), Des Hommes Et Des Dieux (Of Gods And Men) (2010) (LFF), Neds (2010) (LFF), Let Me In (2010) (LFF), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010), Man On A Motorcycle (2009) (LFF), Robinson In Ruins (2010) (LFF), Picnic (1955) (LFF),

John Park – Wednesday 8 September 2010 – Odeon Leicester Square, London, 22-24 Leicester Square, WC2H 7JY, London UK – (c) www.fringereport.com 2010