BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Hidden Fortress (Relaxed Screening)

+ intro and discussion. See the film that George Lucas drew inspiration from for the original trilogy in the Star Wars saga, in the first of two relaxed screenings in our Kurosawa season. At a t...

January 30, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

Berberian Sound Studio

The screening on Sunday 29 January will be introduced by Mark Jenkin and Peter Strickland. This is a great example of an untrustworthy film – a feeling that you’re in unsafe hands and not everyth...

January 29, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Requiem for a Village

It may be nearly half a century old, but this melancholic portrait of loss seems more relevant than ever. I was intrigued by this film when I heard about the dead rising from their graves sequence,...

January 27, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Guillermo del Toro in Conversation - Animation for All

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and has gone on to receive huge critical acclaim and awards attention. We are delighted to welcome Guillermo de...

January 27, 2023 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Sanjuro

Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro ends with what must surely be the briefest, and most breathtaking, duel in all cinema. Two samurai swordsmen face up to each other, motionless, gazing into each other’s eye...

January 26, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Nolly

+ Q&A with writer Russell T Davies, cast Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Gatiss and Augustus Prew, exec producer Nicola Shindler and director Peter Hoar. Chaired by Boyd Hilton. Academy Award-nomin...

January 26, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Andrei Rublev

Among filmmakers, one of the paradigmatic cases of indomitable entrepreneurial spirit was Andrei Tarkovsky. For each of his films he had conflicts with the Soviet State Committee for Cinematography...

January 26, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Bad Sleep Well

Introduced by season co-curator Ian Haydn Smith (Sunday 29 January only). SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Tangentially a version of Hamlet, Kurosawa’s rebuttal to...

January 22, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Tár

Lydia Tár (Blanchett) is widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors. An EGOT winner who guest teaches at Juilliard; she is also the first female chief conductor of the Berlin ...

January 20, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Sansho the Bailiff

Never do the years pass so sadly on screen as they do in Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho Dayu. In this period tragedy set in 11th-century Japan, the reunion of a kidnapped brother and sister with their he...

January 20, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Hidden Fortress

If Kurosawa had proven himself skilled at subverting the conventions of Japanese genre filmmaking, with this hugely entertaining film he not only proved he could embrace a straightforward adventure...

January 20, 2023 | KUROSAWA

The Spirit of the Beehive

Set in a small village in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, Erice’s bewitching portrait of innocence, the perils of adulthood and the power of cinema is a truly sensory experience. Illuminate...

January 19, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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High and Low

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Among his collaborators and crew, Akira Kurosawa was known as kaze-otoko – ‘wind man’. (The nickname tenno – ‘emperor’ – was wished ...

January 19, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Kurosawa Season Introduction

Season co-programmers Asif Kapadia and Ian Haydn Smith will be joined by a guest speaker for this introduction event to discuss the key themes structuring the Kurosawa season and the films screenin...

January 18, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Darren Aronofsky in Conversation

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky was born and raised in Brooklyn. Aronofsky heads Protozoa Pictures, based in Chinatown NYC. His upcoming film The Whale for A24 stars Brendan Fr...

January 18, 2023 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

A Brighter Summer Day

Measured, elliptical and understated, Yang’s riveting account of growing up in Taiwan in the early 1960s focuses on a boy’s on-off involvement in gang rivalry and violence and his experience of you...

January 16, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Dodes’ka-den

After five years’ absence, Kurosawa returned to the cinema with his first colour feature. It was also his first following the end of his collaboration with Toshiro Mifune and the archetypal superma...

January 15, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Bait

I always wanted to make a film about the fishing industry. 16mm, black & white, dirty, full of grain, faces, working hands, the rough edges, warts and all, wild, tangible, real. It actually en...

January 15, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Two Years at Sea

The screening on Saturday 14 January will feature an intro and Q&A with Mark Jenkin and Ben Rivers. It’s the aesthetic, the grain, the flicker, the texture that draws me in. But it’s the comp...

January 14, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, groun...

January 14, 2023 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA PREVIEW