BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Volver

Pedro Almodóvar has let his hair go grey. Though his bushy locks remained suspiciously dark well into his fifties, now ‘the snows of time have silvered his temples.’ This poetic description comes f...

April 3, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Parasite

Last year at Cannes, Lee Chang-dong held up a magnifying glass to Korean society and unveiled his critique on the one per cent vs the 99 per cent in Burning. Now it’s Bong Joon-ho’s turn. Of course...

April 3, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

A Hole in the Head

April 2, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

Daisies

When Věra Chytilová died in 2014 at the age of 85, tributes remembered the director as a vibrant innovator, whose uncompromising vision in a decidedly male-run industry made her known as the ‘First...

April 2, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

The Tiger of Eschnapur

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In 1958 West German producer Artur Brauner offered Fritz Lang the opportunity to make a new film based on Das Indische Grabmal, scri...

April 1, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

Memories of Murder

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Memories of Murder is based on a series of unsolved murders that took place between 1986-91 in provincial South Korea: ten women wer...

March 31, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

Duckweed (aka Floating Weeds)

Part of the Eleven Women TV series, Duckweed marked Edward Yang’s directorial debut following his return to Taiwan. Co-producers Sylvia Chang and Chen Chun-tian envisioned a platform for emerging t...

March 31, 2025 | Myriad Voices
Reframing Taiwan New Cinema

Nope

In the wake of the success of Get Out and Us, both of which disrupted and redefined the horror genre in singular ways, Jordan Peele was eager to expand his cinematic canvas, embrace a challenge unl...

March 15, 2025 | BLACK RODEO
A HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WESTERN

The Harder They Fall

Writer/director Jeymes Samuel on ‘The Harder They Fall’ You wrote and directed the 50-minute western They Die by Dawn in 2013, but this is your debut proper as writer-director. What draws you to t...

March 15, 2025 | BLACK RODEO
A HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WESTERN

Her

‘It’s about falling in love with an AI, yet the film makes you feel so human in all its painful and blissful ways.’ – Leah K, BFI Member Spike Jonze’s vision of the near future makes its Californi...

March 13, 2025 | MEMBER PICKS

La Captive

A contemporary review La Captive is a film like no other currently on London’s screens, but if the director’s name, Chantal Akerman, puts you in mind of an avant-garde, confrontationally feminist c...

February 24, 2025 | CHANTAL AKERMAN
ADVENTURES IN PERCEPTION

A Confucian Confusion

The Chinese title of A Confucian Confusion, Edward Yang’s first comedy, is Duli Shidai, which means ‘Time of Independence’ and also means that it’s calculated to raise government hackles in Taiwan....

February 23, 2025 | THE FILMS OF EDWARD YANG
CONVERSATIONS WITH A FRIEND

Nuit et jour

Nuit et jour confirms the themes and ideas that have concerned Chantal Akerman over almost 20 years of filmmaking. Yet, in some ways, it can be seen as a capitulation to commercialism, a turning aw...

February 15, 2025 | CHANTAL AKERMAN
ADVENTURES IN PERCEPTION

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Haunting … it seems that in writing on Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, one cannot help but invoke this at once nebulous, yet appropriate description of the film’s aesthetic and affective force...

February 14, 2025 | RE-RELEASES

Love & Basketball

Director and screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote the original screenplay for Love & Basketball while taking a sabbatical from her six years of writing various television series, including ...

February 14, 2025 | VALENTINES DAY

La Folie Almayer

Chantal Akerman’s final narrative film, this hypnotic adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel encountered unusual difficulties finding theatrical release – particularly surprising considering Akerman’s...

February 11, 2025 | CHANTAL AKERMAN
ADVENTURES IN PERCEPTION

Posse

Posse is a saga of the wild and untamed West about a tight-knit bunch of outlaws who ride together and fight together, seizing justice where it is not given and carving out their niche on the Ameri...

February 10, 2025 | BLACK RODEO
A HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WESTERN

Toute une nuit

Toute une nuit is made up entirely of a series of fragments. While apparently unconnected, they are all similar in tone. These amorous comings and goings, some happy, some unhappy, are all marked b...

February 8, 2025 | CHANTAL AKERMAN
ADVENTURES IN PERCEPTION

No Home Movie

No Home Movie, Chantal Akerman’s final film, is both a veering departure from the trajectory of her recent work and completely of a piece with what had come before. Where her last feature, Almayer’...