BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Sátántangó

Béla Tarr is not a man for small talk. When our Zoom call connects, I begin by thanking him for his time and telling him I was pleased to have this opportunity – to which he replies that I shouldn’...

August 17, 2024 | WILL HEAVEN FALL UPON US
A BÉLA TARR RETROSPECTIVE

Lone Star

When an old skeleton with a sheriff’s badge is unearthed in a Texas border town, Sheriff Sam Deeds must investigate what could have happened to his predecessor. Examining racial violence, local leg...

August 16, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

The Philip Glass Effect

Join our special guests Richard Guérin from Philip Glass’s publishing company and record label, and author and journalist Eddi Fiegel for a richly illustrated discussion about the composer’s distin...

August 14, 2024 | SHIFTING LAYERS
THE FILM SCORES OF PHILIP GLASS

Henry Selick in Conversation

At the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s, Henry Selick was one of the few students who attended both the Disney-centric character animation course and the one for experimental animation...

August 12, 2024 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Coraline 15th Anniversary Screening (3D)

+ Q&A with director Henry Selick and actor Teri Hatcher The story of Coraline Jones and her adventure in the Other World is one that has crossed many avenues of storytelling – father to daught...

August 11, 2024 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Sky Peals

Moin Hussain’s highly anticipated feature debut blends realist drama with a playful suggestion of otherworldly science-fiction. Adam works nightshifts at a motorway service station and lives a life...

August 9, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Ran

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Akira Kurosawa often liked to draw on western literature for his material – Dostoevsky for The Idiot (1951), Gorky for The Lower De...

August 9, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Truman Show

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Truman Burbank lives an unassuming small-town life, unaware that every movement in his life is anything but ordinary. His wife, his ...

August 8, 2024 | SHIFTING LAYERS
THE FILM SCORES OF PHILIP GLASS

Naqoyqatsi

The final part of Reggio and Glass’s visually rich symphonic trilogy concludes with a title that translates from the Hopi language as ‘life as war’. It depicts an interconnected world where nature ...

August 8, 2024 | SHIFTING LAYERS
THE FILM SCORES OF PHILIP GLASS

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

Sátántangó

Lone Star

The Philip Glass Effect

Henry Selick in Conversation

Coraline 15th Anniversary Screening (3D)

Sky Peals

Ran

The Truman Show

Naqoyqatsi

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

FEATURED TAGS

The Golden Voyage
of Sinbad