Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Carnival of Souls

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

The American Friend

Faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Highsmith for most of its way, The American Friend suddenly ditches the novel and gallops cavalierly through a hundred-odd pages (more than a third of th...

Being There

If the perfect fool of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, who seems to rise by sheer weightlessness to the highest office in the land, has a predecessor in the comic literature of the United States, it ...

Johnny Guitar

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

Calendar

Amongst Atom Egoyan’s finest achievements and representative of his interest in mediated memory and loss, Calendar finds the director playing a Canadian photographer who, while on an assignment sho...

Clockers

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

Swimming Pool

A repressed British crime novelist travels to the south of France for a sojourn at her publisher’s summer house, where she hopes to write her next book. However, the peaceful stay is interrupted by...

Exotica

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

Scarface

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

The Ear

The main Cannes Film Festival competition line-up in 1990 was somewhat unusual in that not everything in it was brand new. Or rather, while two films were receiving public premieres, they were deci...

The California Dolls (aka ...All the Marbles)

The screening on Wednesday 23 July will be introduced by season curator and Moviedrome’s producer Nick Freand Jones ‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but do...

Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson on ‘Boogie Nights’ One of the things that’s interesting about Boogie Nights is its tone shifts, for instance between dramatic and comic/parodic. There are two answers to that...

Witchfinder General

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

Two-Lane Blacktop

The screening on Wednesday 9 July will be introduced by season curator and Moviedrome’s producer Nick Freand Jones ‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but doe...

Get Carter

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

An American Werewolf in London

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

Alphaville

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Alphaville is the story of special agent Lemmy Caution, played by American actor and naturalised noir icon Eddie Constantine, who ha...

Sweet Smell of Success

The screening on Sunday 6 July will be introduced by filmmaker and Moviedrome presenter Alex Cox ‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to ev...

Walker

The screening on Saturday 5 July will be introduced by filmmaker and Moviedrome presenter Alex Cox ‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to ...

The Fly

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...