BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Belle

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. When Captain Sir John Lindsay returns to his young daughter Dido Belle after the death of her mother, a former slave, he proffers hi...

November 1, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Dracula - Restored and Uncut

Dracula cemented Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as one of horror cinema’s most iconic screen pairings, launched Hammer Films into the stratosphere and changed British horror and pop culture fore...

October 31, 2026 | Previews and Events

Midnight

Now that the Thirties Hollywood cinema is being constantly explored by television, we are in a much better position to assess the varied talents who were working at this time. But certain key ﬁlms ...

October 30, 2026 | Almost Perfect
The Films of Billy Wilder

A Screaming Man

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun on ‘A Screaming Man’ ‘A Screaming Man is not a Dancing Bear’ is the title of a poem by Aimé Césaire, the French-Martiniquan poet, politician and champion of Négritude. Was it ...

October 29, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Fatherland

After denouncing the Nazi regime, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann spends years living in Switzerland and the United States. In 1949, he embarks on a road trip from Allied West Germany to Sov...

October 26, 2026 | Seniors Paid Matinee

Bamako

Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako examines the ways globalisation has contributed to a process of effectively recolonising Africa through the snares of western financial institutions. A fictional docud...

October 26, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

The Intruder

The peculiarity of The Intruder in Roger Corman’s career has been remarked on both before and after the event. In Sight & Sound, Summer 1963, the columnist Arkadin, in a piece signalling the de...

October 25, 2026 | Movie Maverick
100 Years of Roger Corman

Babymother

Stuart Hall on ‘Babymother’ Despite the much-acclaimed British cinema renaissance, Black British ﬁlms are still rarer than gold dust. Babymother, the new ‘reggae musical’ from Formation Films, cour...

October 25, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Ken Russell’s The Devils

Inspired by the true story of 17th-century priest Urbain Grandier, accused of bewitching a convent of nuns, The Devils lays bare the collusion of church and state through a searing vision of religi...

October 23, 2026 | Re-releases

The Wild Angels

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review It’s now ten years since Dick Miller accidentally stuck a knife through the cat in his bedroom wall and conver...

October 22, 2026 | Movie Maverick
100 Years of Roger Corman

Still a Brother - Inside the Negro Middle Class

+ intro by Matthew Barrington, curator of film at the Barbican Centre Shooting outside the box: William Greaves in ten films Cinema history is full of those whose long careers have become footnote...

October 20, 2026 | Experimenta

The Masque of the Red Death

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The Masque of the Red Death, Roger Corman’s first British film, shared a double bill with X-Ray Eyes and conclusively silenced any d...

October 20, 2026 | Movie Maverick
100 Years of Roger Corman

24 Hour Party People

There can be few more defunct currencies in cinema than nostalgia. Films that trade in the past without yearning for its unreachable pleasures are so rare that when one does arrive, it may feel as ...

October 19, 2026 | Re-releases

The Girl Cut in Two

Claude Chabrol on ‘The Girl Cut in Two’ ‘A chaste film about perversion’ is Claude Chabrol’s description of his slyly amusing melodrama The Girl Cut in Two. His 56th feature tells the story of Gab...

October 3, 2026 | Claude Chabrol
Elements of Crime

The Bridesmaid

Claude Chabrol on ‘The Bridesmaid’ Your thrillers are always totally distinctive. How do you explain that? Generally, in thrillers, it’s the plot that keeps things moving. In my films, that’s not...

October 3, 2026 | Claude Chabrol
Elements of Crime

Pretty in Pink

Producer and writer John Hughes’ bittersweet tale, with a soundtrack that includes tracks by The Psychedelic Furs, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, INXS, Suzanne Vega and Orchestral Manoeuvres i...

October 2, 2026 | A Road Less Travelled
Harry Dean Stanton

La Cérémonie

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In recent years, Claude Chabrol’s films with the actress Isabelle Huppert have epitomised the best and worst of his work. Une affair...

October 1, 2026 | Claude Chabrol
Elements of Crime

King Rat

+ intro by Sarah Standing, Bryan Forbes’ daughter Bryan Forbes on ‘King Rat’ For an English director to make a film in Hollywood is a little like playing a Cup Final on an away ground. But everyon...

September 29, 2026 | Projecting the Archive
Bryan Forbes at 100

Shame

Steve McQueen on ‘Shame’ Where do you think the tipping point is between someone who is merely sexually promiscuous and somebody who is sexually addicted? When I first heard about the idea of sex...

September 24, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Paris Is Burning

Nearly 40 years after the release of Paris Is Burning (1990), Jennie Livingston’s beloved documentary exploring the LGBTQ+ underworld of New York’s ball culture, its reputation is stronger than eve...

September 23, 2026 | Big Screen Classics