BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Isle of Dogs

Many auteur directors create films that seem to exist in pocket universes as self-contained, circumscribed and minutely thought-through as the virtual-reality environment of a computer game or the ...

August 7, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Time of the Heathen

An erratic wanderer crosses paths with a young Black boy while walking through rural America. What begins as an American neorealist film soon evolves into a psychedelic Western, exploring the impac...

August 6, 2024 | RESTORED

ParaNorman

When a small town comes under siege by zombies, who can it call? ‘Norman!’ From Focus Features and LAIKA, the companies behind the Academy Award-nominated animated feature Coraline, comes the come...

August 5, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

The Old Dark House

‘We’ve lost our way, we’re somewhere in the Welsh mountains, it’s half past nine and I’m very sorry.’ The three characters we encounter at the beginning of James Whale’s 1932 film The Old Dark Hou...

August 5, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Kundun

+ intro by writer Ian Haydn Smith (on Monday 5 August only) A breathtaking visual and aural experience, Scorsese’s magisterial epic charts the early life of the Dalai Lama, from his being identifi...

August 5, 2024 | SHIFTING LAYERS
THE FILM SCORES OF PHILIP GLASS

The Golden Voyage
of Sinbad

+ intro by Alan Friswell, the conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models (Sunday 4 August only) When Sinbad and his crew find a piece of golden tablet carried by a tiny winged creature, th...

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

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas

Director Henry Selick on ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas’ Disney is marketing its latest feature as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas. But though the film is based on a poem...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

In the twelve years since The Nightmare before Christmas, which was directed by Henry Selick but conceived by Tim Burton, stop-motion animation has become almost an endangered technique. The makers...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Frankenweenie

From concept to filming, the making of Frankenweenie was a labour of love, involving a huge crew of artisans, animators, prop makers, puppet makers, designers and artists. Over the years it took to...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Werckmeister Harmonies

Béla Tarr’s films since 1987, in collaboration with screenwriter/novelist László Krasznahorkai, may be challenging in their often extreme use of duration, but they are hardly short on narrative dri...

August 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

The Tale of the Fox

Please note that the few sentences in French in the short film The Mascot are not subtitled, but you’ll find a translation below. A crafty fox that keeps tricking people becomes the source of much...

August 2, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Alma's Rainbow

‘I could write a book on the response to Alma’s Rainbow. The film took a long time to make. I raised all the money independently. Distributors came and looked at the film, and there was a real spli...

August 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Fantastic Mr Fox

The hero of Wes Anderson’s animated film Fantastic Mr Fox gazes into his wife’s eyes. ‘I’m just dying to tell you the truth about myself,’ he says, apologising for the trouble he’s caused. ‘I’m a w...

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

In a Lonely Place

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. ‘I was infatuated with her, but I didn’t like her very much’: so began director Nicholas Ray’s relationship with Gloria Grahame, wh...

July 29, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Eraserhead

Content warning: Contains strong gore and disturbing surreal imagery. David Lynch’s debut feature takes us into the heart of a bleak industrial wasteland, exploring the grotesque underbelly of m...

July 29, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

I Saw the TV Glow

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Faya Dayi

A film ten years in the making, Faya Dayi was conceived by director Jessica Beshir as an act of reconnecting with the Ethiopian homeland she left at the age of 16, when her family fled to Mexico to...

July 26, 2024 | TIGRITUDES
A PAN-AFRICAN FILM CYCLE 1956-2024

About Dry Grasses

The latest work from the Turkish auteur behind Once upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep is an arresting, character-driven study of loneliness and self-interest. Samet, an art teacher assigned ...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Audition

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Our habitual tools for categorising films and filmmakers seem woefully inadequate for an encompassing approach to Takashi Miike (and...

July 24, 2024 | DISCOMFORT MOVIES

The Verdict

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Some 25 Years on from 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet returned to the drama of the court room and provided Paul Newman with his most vuln...

July 22, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Isle of Dogs

Time of the Heathen

ParaNorman

The Old Dark House

Kundun

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

Frankenweenie

Werckmeister Harmonies

The Tale of the Fox

Alma's Rainbow

Fantastic Mr Fox

In a Lonely Place

Eraserhead

I Saw the TV Glow

Faya Dayi

About Dry Grasses

Audition

The Verdict

FEATURED TAGS

The Golden Voyage
of Sinbad