BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Island
with live accompaniment by
the Balanescu Ensemble

+ Q&A with director Anca Damian and composer Alexander Balanescu A subversive take on Robinson Crusoe, Anca Damian’s film introduces us to an exile on an island who finds common ground with a ...

September 6, 2024 | SONIC

Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger’s delirious melodrama is one of the most erotic films ever to emerge from British cinema, let alone in the repressed 1940s – it was released just two years after David Lean’s...

September 6, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

In Camera

This bold and delightfully unpredictable portrait from Naqqash Khalid both highlights and critiques the challenges of navigating the UK film industry as a British Asian actor. Aden, a struggling ac...

September 5, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Do the Right Thing

During the hottest day of the year, Mookie (Lee) travels around his predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood making deliveries for the local pizzeria run by Italian American Sal (Aiello). As the ...

September 5, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Rear Window

Refocusing the Spectator: a comparison of the critical response to ‘Rear Window’ in 1954 and on its re-release in 1983 When Rear Window was first released in 1954, Hitchcock’s authorial mark was s...

September 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Little Otík

+ intro by musician and Starve Acre composer Matthew Herbert (Wednesday 4 September only) Jan Svankmajer on ‘Little Otík’ Little Otík is based on a folk tale best known from the version by K.J. Er...

September 4, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Alice

Although a declared admirer of Lewis Carroll as the inadvertent pioneer of surrealism, Jan Svankmajer firmly tells the Alice story his own way, much as one would expect. Like an extended reconstruc...

September 4, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

A Fishy Story

Cheung stars as an aspiring actress who befriends her neighbour, a struggling unlicensed cab driver. Set against the backdrop of the 1967 riots, it is a turbulent yet playful and romantic Breakfast...

September 3, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

The screening on Wednesday 2 October will be introduced by film and talks programmer and writer Nadia M. Oliva. With a plot of pure Shakespearean farce, witty dialogue and lyrics by Demy, and a ma...

September 3, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Rebel

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson on Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ When did you first meet Tony Hancock? We first met Tony Hancock in the stalls of the Paris Cinema, Lower Regent Street, in October 1951, during...

September 2, 2024 | SENIORS

The Piano

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. For a while I could not think, let alone write, about The Piano without shaking. Precipitating a flood of feelings, The Piano deman...

September 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Dead of Night

Horror films or stories of the supernatural were little attempted in British cinema prior to the days of Hammer in the 1950s. There are the exceptions of course, such as The Ghoul (1933) and Dark E...

September 2, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Shooting Stars

‘Not until Peeping Tom (1960) over 30 years later did a British film so knowingly and so effectively turn its own camera on itself. It is a young man’s film, the first effort of someone representat...

September 1, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Lee

+ Q&A with Kate Winslet hosted by broadcaster Anna Smith. Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York was, as Kate Winslet explains, ‘An unstoppable force of nature with a t...

September 1, 2024 | PREVIEW

The Draughtsman’s Contract

Peter Greenaway on ‘The Draughtsman’s Contract’ The Draughtsman’s Contract. A film that is 40 years old. Made in 1982 about events in 1694. Elaborate, stylised, enjoyable, spiteful and mysterious, ...

September 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Dougal and the Blue Cat

The arrival of Buxton the Blue Cat throws Dougal, Florence and friends into turmoil. His desire for control and obsession with Blue sees Buxton become increasingly powerful, proclaiming that everyt...

September 1, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

Sing Sing

Filmmakers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley began their careers together in the early 2010s, having met after graduating from university and finding they shared similar interests in telling stories of...

August 30, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Starve Acre

+ Q&A with director Daniel Kokotajlo and actors Morfydd Clark and Robert Emms Daniel Kokotajlo on ‘Starve Acre’ What first drew you to Andrew Michael Hurley’s novella? I like Andrew’s affini...

August 28, 2024 | PREVIEW

Who in da Mornin

We are delighted that the director of Who in da Mornin , Jonathan Isaac Jackson, will introduce this screening and attend a Q&A. We are also very pleased to announce that Mario Gousse will joi...

August 24, 2024 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

The Turin Horse

A contemporary review The inevitable question confronting any artist of stature as the twilight years close in: will the inspiration fade away; and if so when? And concomitantly: should I call time...

August 24, 2024 | WILL HEAVEN FALL UPON US
A BÉLA TARR RETROSPECTIVE

The Islandwith live accompaniment by the Balanescu Ensemble