BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Story of Looking

+ Pre-recorded Q&A As he prepares for surgery to restore his vision, award-winning filmmaker Mark Cousins explores the role that visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives....

June 12, 2021 | SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST 2021

Quintet

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ln the attempts to ﬁnd an explanation for Quintet, it has been likened to Images, the art-house ﬁlm Altman made at a time when he w...

June 12, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Doctor Who
Dragonfire

Writer Ian Briggs came to the BBC’s Script Unit from studying drama at Manchester University, via a short stint as a member of the behind-the-scenes management team in local theatres. He soon met A...

June 12, 2021 | IN PERSON & PREVIEW

The First 54 Years
An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation

+ Pre-recorded Q&A ‘Military occupation’ is an abstract term, open to mistaken interpretation. What does ‘occupation’ imply? What does it mean for people living under occupation? What means mu...

June 11, 2021 | SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST 2021

Fargo

‘We wrote the part of Carl specifically for Steve (as we wrote the parts of Marge for Fran, and Grim for Peter) because somehow it was appropriate that amongst all these second-generation Scandinav...

June 11, 2021 | NEW RELEASES AND RE-RELEASES

O.C. and Stiggs

How is it possible that a film whose entire narrative is framed as a prolonged crank call to Gabon’s then-president Omar Bongo is not a mainstay of the retro/cult screening circuit? Altman’s pungen...

June 9, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Le Doulos

+ pre-recorded intro by Professor Ginette Vincendeau, King’s College London (Wed 30 June only) SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With 1,475,391 tickets sold in Franc...

June 7, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Wiz

The Wiz began life in 1974, as a Broadway musical with an all-black cast. It became the smash hit of the season, winning Tony Awards in seven categories: Best Musical, Best Score (Charlie Smalls),...

June 6, 2021 | HER VOICE - BLACK WOMEN FROM THE SPOTLIGHT TO THE SCREEN

Streamers

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Although the after-glow of MASH and Nashville (abetted by some purblind critical activity) still clouds the issue, it seems increas...

June 6, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

My Name Is Pauli Murray

+ Pre-recorded Q&A Pauli Murray knew intimately what it meant to live a life that was out of sync – when even language wasn’t sufficient to define or describe a journey. Lawyer, professor, po...

June 6, 2021 | SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST 2021

The Beatles and India

+ Q&A with directors The Beatles and India is a unique historical chronicle of the enduring love affair between The Beatles and India that started more than half a century ago. Rare archival...

June 6, 2021 | TONGUES ON FIRE UK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL

Lift like a Girl

+ Pre-recorded Q&A On a corner-lot in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, female weightlifters train to become Olympic champions. Following in the footsteps of some of Egypt’s most famous athletes...

June 5, 2021 | SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST 2021

Fool for Love

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. It’s impossible not to see this adaptation of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love in relation to his script for Paris, Texas, and difficul...

June 5, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Buffalo Bill and the Indians

In the preface to his play Indians, on which Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians is loosely based, Arthur Kopit notes how, during rewritings between the London and Broadway openings, he evolved f...

June 5, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

What's Love Got to Do with It

In a genre famous for bungles and mediocrities, Brian Gibson’s biopic of Tina Turner, What’s Love Got to Do with It, works on every level. This is partly because it has advantages which counterbal...

June 4, 2021 | HER VOICE - BLACK WOMEN FROM THE SPOTLIGHT TO THE SCREEN

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

+ Pre-recorded Q&A In the summer of 1969, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). After that summer, the footage was largely forgotten – until now...

June 4, 2021 | SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST 2021

The Man Who Wasn't There

In October 1942, Raymond Chandler wrote a letter to Blanche Knopf, wife and associate of his American publisher, in which he described his resentment at having ‘to ride around on [Dashiell] Hammett...

June 4, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Gunda

Where his prior film, the acclaimed epic Aquarela, was a reminder of the fragility of human tenure on earth, in Gunda, master filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky reminds us that we share our planet with b...

June 4, 2021 | NEW RELEASES AND RE-RELEASES

20 Feet from Stardom

‘Singing background remains a somewhat unheralded position… But that walk to the front is complicated. It’s a conceptual leap,’ opines Bruce Springsteen, kicking off director Morgan Neville’s exub...