BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Let’s Talk (Ehkeely)

+ pre-recorded Q&A with director Marianne Khoury A mother and her daughter explore together four generations of women from the same family, an Egyptian family, originally from the Levant, a fa...

September 13, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

The Fallen Idol

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Alexander Korda had something of a genius for teaming up creative personnel. Having matched Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger,...

September 13, 2021 | SENIORS

Silver Streak

Set on a train from Los Angeles to Chicago, Silver Streak marks Pryor’s first collaboration with his frequent co-star Gene Wilder. The film mixes romance, comedy, caper, and big-budget action, and ...

September 12, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

Sicario

Denis Villeneuve’s drugs-war thriller Sicario opens in heart-stopping fashion with a raid on a house near Phoenix, Arizona. What FBI agent Kate Macer (an excellent Emily Blunt) and her SWAT team fi...

September 12, 2021 | DENIS VILLENEUVE
THE PATH TO DUNE

The Last Tree

+ Q&A with director Shola Amoo British writer-director Shola Amoo’s second feature, The Last Tree, is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film set in the early 2000s. It centres on a young b...

September 11, 2021 | NFTS AT 50

It Must Be Heaven

While some writer-directors give themselves the best lines, Elia Suleiman has uttered three words in his four self-starring, feature-length films. Significantly, those trio of words all appear in ...

September 11, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

Incendies

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. From the outset, Incendies is clearly not going to be your average tale of conflict in the Middle East. We open with a slow, dreamy ...

September 11, 2021 | DENIS VILLENEUVE
THE PATH TO DUNE

Car Wash

‘Car Wash’: a contemporary review At a time when many of the old-style forms of community-minded entertainment have virtually vanished from American cinema – a demise unwittingly highlighted by suc...

September 11, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

Blazing Saddles

Richard Pryor co-wrote this Mel Brooks classic and was originally meant to star in it, but unfortunately he was uninsurable at the time of shooting. One of Brooks’ bawdiest spoofs sees a corrupt Ol...

September 11, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

The Big Heat

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Contemporary reviews With The Big Heat, Fritz Lang found a subject – a small town dominated by a racketeer, and a young detective’...

September 11, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

143 Sahara Street

Hassen Ferhani on ‘143 Sahara Street’ How does one meet a character as singular as Malika? After having made Roundabout in My Head, I wanted to hit the road, to cross landscapes and have the enco...

September 11, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

Sweet Thing

Teenager Billie (Lana Rockwell), a 15-year-old girl who fantasises that Billie Holiday is her sort of fairy godmother, and younger brother Nico (Nico Rockwell) share time between their separated pa...

September 10, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Polytechnique

Versatile French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s eclectic filmography to date has run the gamut from eccentric art films (Maelström, 2000) and austere political cinema (Incendies, 2010), via c...

September 10, 2021 | DENIS VILLENEUVE
THE PATH TO DUNE

African Odysseys Presents
The Black History of Comedy

Comedians often use history in their material. In this interactive session we’ll piece together a visual tapestry of the best historical comedy from popular and lesser-known comics from the 1960s t...

September 10, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

Annette

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. The death of cinema has been proclaimed so frequently across the medium’s relatively short lifespan that the notion is now a clich...

September 10, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Laura

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Otto Preminger had come out of Vienna (born in 1906), the son of a famous lawyer, and himself qualified in law before he threw in h...

September 8, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

As Above, So Below

The screening on Friday 1 October will feature a pre-recorded Q&A with director Sarah Francis. Director’s note A few years ago, the image of adults on a swing moving back and forth side by sid...

September 8, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

The Big Sleep

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. David Thomson on ‘The Big Sleep’ For decades now, since a Saturday in 1961 when I saw it three times in a row, coming out of one s...

September 7, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

200 Meters

Director’s Statement I carry lots of memories that I no longer have access to, or it could be that I fear to dwell back into it. Oppression does alienate you as it denies you your basic rights; esp...

September 7, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

The Undercover Man

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Picking through Joseph H. Lewis’ diverse filmography, it is quite easy to find evidence of a director with a strong personality – a...

September 6, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS