BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Tim Burton's
The Nightmare before Christmas

Director Henry Selick on ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’ The film has been marketed as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas , but you’re the director. What do you think is distinctively yo...

December 10, 2023 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Buck and the Preacher

Black American history is presented through the prism of a Western. Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, in which he stars opposite Belafonte, tells the story of a wagon master and con-man pastor wh...

December 10, 2023 | HARRY BELAFONTE
MOVIES RACE DEFIANCE

Kansas City

+intro by actor Miranda Richardson and season curator Burt Caesar (on Sunday 17 December only) Appearing in both The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Harry Belafonte was among the galaxy of...

December 9, 2023 | HARRY BELAFONTE
MOVIES RACE DEFIANCE

Sofia Coppola in Conversation

From her feature debut The Virgin Suicides through to latest film Priscilla, Sofia Coppola has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in American cinema, with a compelling exqui...

December 9, 2023 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Crown v. Stevens +
Behind the Mask

Crown v. Stevens was made by Michael Powell with an eye firmly set on the light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, Crown proved to be his penultimate ‘quota’ film and the last of these that survive...

December 9, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Tangerine

It’s Christmas Eve and at a donut shop in Hollywood a couple of transgender sex workers meet up to discuss a problem one of them faces. Soon, questions of infidelity, the fine line between performa...

December 8, 2023 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

The Red Shoes

5 things to know about ‘The Red Shoes’ 1. It’s a spectacular rejection of realism The Red Shoes, which premiered on 6 September 1948, followed a tremendous run of films by Michael Powell and Emeri...

December 8, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

The Red Shoes in the Spotlight

Join us to dive deeper into the breathtaking world of Powell and Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpiece. Pamela Hutchinson, author of the recently published BFI Film Classics book on The Red Shoes, ...

December 8, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Meet Me in St. Louis

The closer you look at most famous Hollywood productions, the harder it is to see how they turned out all right – let alone to believe that anyone was in charge. Just as on any set the crew trusts ...

December 8, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Earth Mama

‘I don’t need a gold star to tell me I’m a good mom!’ Gia (Tia Nomore) snaps at her case worker, showing her frustration as she struggles to meet the seemingly impossible court-mandated conditions ...

December 8, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Peeping Tom

Thelma Schoonmaker on ‘Peeping Tom’ What’s so powerful is that you care about this man who was a murderer – so beautifully portrayed by Carl Boehm – but who has been created by his father to be a m...

December 7, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Boyz N the Hood

‘One out of every twenty-one Black American males will be murdered in their lifetime. Most will die at the hands of another Black male.’ These two stark statements trigger John Singleton’s 1991 fe...

December 7, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

White Material

Claire Denis’ films aspire to a crystalline purity. Even when packed with the stuff of social and political unrest – war, murder, racial tension, unemployment, refugees, families in crisis – they g...

December 6, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Truelove

+ Q&A with cast Lindsay Duncan, Clarke Peters, Sue Johnston, writer Iain Weatherby, co-creator Charlie Covell and director Chloë Wicks. Chaired by Miranda Sawyer. Truelove is a unique spin o...

December 6, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

The Phantom Light

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Michael Powell bid for box-office success with this tale of a gang of ship-wreckers who spread the legend of a ‘phantom lighthouse’ ...

December 6, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Strange Days

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Kathryn Bigelow shoots in light. Cinema’s outlaw, she disrupts assumptions about where a film can go, taking genres and ripping them...

December 5, 2023 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

Five Easy Pieces

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Three years after Jean-Luc Godard’s weekending couple Corinne and Roland became caught up in the interminable traffic jam that block...

December 5, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The End of the River

+ intro by film scholar Dr Kulraj Phullar ‘Who is guilty, the twig or the current?’ asks a courtroom lawyer, making a plea for clemency for a native Brazilian (played by Indian star Sabu) who fate ...

December 5, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Scrooge

One of the best-known adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic, Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1951 film stars Alastair Sim as the notorious curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge, visited by the ghosts of Ch...

December 3, 2023 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

The Love Test +
Something Always Happens

Male chauvinist pigs meet 1930s girl power in Powell’s superior quota-quickie, in which chemists seeking a formula for fireproofing celluloid take exception to colleague Mary’s upcoming promotion –...

December 3, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas