Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Distant Voices
Still Lives

Terence Davies makes films in instalments. The 100-minute Trilogy – Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration – which was begun in 1976 took eight years to complete. It won the 1984 BF...

As Tears Go By
(Wong Gok ka moon)

Wong Kar Wai’s impressive debut feature may seem like a conventional Hong Kong triad drama on the surface but it offers glimpses of what would become his distinctive signature style. This atmospher...

Trottie True
(aka The Gay Lady)

Introduced by BFI Curator Josephine Botting. Based on a popular 1946 novel, Trottie True can be related to the Victorian music-hall world of Champagne Charlie (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1944) and Gai...

Cookie's Fortune

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘Aunt Jewell was murdered!’ Except she wasn’t (and it’s no spoiler to say so). Rather, the murder plot is an elaborate ruse concoct...

Binding Sentiments (Holdudvar)

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. From the opening ‘Scope tracking shot across the airfield it’s clear that this is a film about observation. Kati Kovács plays the f...

The Girl +
Introducing Márta Mészáros

Once a major European cinema name, but comparatively neglected since the early 1990s, Márta Mészáros has long been overdue a revival. If the upcoming 90th birthday retrospective at BFI Southbank in...

Short Cuts

The last word spoken in Robert Altman’s film Short Cuts is ‘lemonade’: we hear it as the camera tracks out over a briefly shaken Los Angeles, as two partying couples toast to survival in the face o...

Kansas City

Part of Robert Altman’s 1990s comeback, but made directly after the catwalk wobble of Prêt-à-porter (1994), Kansas City is a tale of jazz, kidnapping and gangsters set in the eponymous Missouri cit...

Binti

Binti, a 12-year-old girl, was born in Congo but has lived with her father Jovial in Belgium since she was a baby. Despite not having any legal documents, Binti wants to live a normal life, and dre...

All the President's Men

A contemporary review A reputation as one of the most faithful and artful of movie adaptations has preceded All the President’s Men to the screen. Beginning with Robert Redford’s acquaintance with...

Wild Strawberries

On the 20th of February 1960, Ingmar Bergman delivered an address at the Swedish Film Academy. The following tribute to Victor Sjöström is a slightly abridged translation of that address. No. I c...

Vincent and Theo

Robert Altman on ‘Vincent and Theo’ When I took on Vincent and Theo, I was very clear about what kind of picture I was not going to make. I’ve never seen one of those biographical films that I lik...

Prêt-à-porter

A contemporary review Fashion means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It can be seen as an industry, as a social phenomenon or as an art-form. In his latest film, Prêt-à-port...

The Player

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Robert Altman on ‘The Player’ I hadn’t heard of this project until March a year ago. I hadn’t read or heard of the book; it was ...

How Green Was My Valley

John Ford’s Oscar®-winning adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s best-seller about the hardships faced by a Welsh mining family in the late 19th century fields some glaringly inappropriate accents, yet...

Supernova

A lovely, semi-abstract sequence opens Harry Macqueen’s Supernova. A dark sky lights up, star by star, in time with a single repeated piano note. With every key strike, more points of light appear;...

Rumble Fish

‘A dreamy coming-of-age film, soundtracked by Stewart Copeland.’ Katie Sawyer, BFI Member SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A contemporary review Francis Coppola’...

All about My Mother

The first of Almodóvar’s 13 features to be shown in competition at Cannes, All about My Mother not only won him the prize for best director but also proved to be the popular hit of the festival, w...

Hope and Glory

Hope and Glory is a bold example of a film refusing to tailor itself to the supposed requirements of the substantial international audience that it presumably needs. The meticulously detailed subur...

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)

The stunning feature debut from the Esiri twin brothers, Arie and Chuko, opens on a chaos of red, yellow, green and black electric cables, echoing the currents of desire which animate the film. Eyi...