BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Queendom

No one quite uses the term ‘degenerate art’ in Queendom, but the sentiment is nigh. Russia, it seems, is not a country big enough to hold both a chest-baring Kremlin folk saviour, who bombs his nei...

December 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Fallen Leaves

Coming six years after Aki Kaurismäki announced his retirement from filmmaking, Fallen Leaves feels like a return to very familiar territory. The director’s last two features were unusually explici...

December 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Vigil

+ Q&A with Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, Romola Garai, Dougray Scott, writer Tom Edge and executive producer Jake Lushington Following multiple unexplained fatalities at a Scottish military faci...

November 27, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Run Lola Run

+ intro and discussion Who said time travel had to be about science-fiction? Tom Tykwer responds with this thrilling crime drama that saw the re-emergence of a vital German cinema. With its punk...

November 27, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Event Schedule 12:00-12:05 Welcome and introduction by Claire Smith and Nathalie Morris 12:05-12:50 New Land, New Boundaries, New Worlds: Exiles and Outsiders in the Films of Powell and Pressburg...

November 25, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

The Eternal Daughter

Joanna Hogg is interested in how we are shaped by the rooms we occupy. The starkest example is Exhibition (2014), set in the unique home that architect James Melvin designed with so many nooks and ...

November 24, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Anatomy of a Fall

The protagonist of Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall is no easy or ingratiating character, but the woman who plays the role is unequivocal about her. ‘I love her,’ says Sandra Hülle...

November 24, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

BUG 65

BUG is back! A whole 12 months since we were last at BFI Southbank, your favourite night of big screen music video awesomeness, internet nonsense (good nonsense not the other stuff) has returned, w...

November 23, 2023 | EVENTS

Twilight

+ intro by Jason Wood, BFI Executive Director of Public Programmes and Audiences, and Second Run’s Mehelli Modi. An occasional colleague of both Miklós Jancsó (as an actor) and Béla Tarr (as a pro...

November 21, 2023 | RESTORED

Miracle in Soho

In a Rank publicity hand out, Emeric Pressburger summarised his intentions of Miracle in Soho: ‘The more I saw of the district the more extraordinary it began to appear to me. But soon I noticed th...

November 20, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Wish

What’s it about? + Q&A with directors Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn, songwriter Julia Michaels, voice actor Ariana DeBose, producers Peter Del Vecho, Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones and wri...

November 19, 2023 | BFI FAMILIES

Behold a Pale Horse

Set 20 years after the Spanish Civil War, Pressburger’s perspective-shifting first novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday, published in 1961, characteristically avoided simplistic moral judgments. He wrot...

November 19, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Predestination

In Greek mythology, it is precisely Oedipus’s attempts to avoid murdering his own father and marrying his own mother that drive him to fulfil that predicted fate. Yet in dramatising this clash of f...

November 18, 2023 | DESTINATION TIME TRAVEL
PLAYING WITH TIME IN FILM AND TV

Mami Wata

+ intro and panel discussion with director C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi and producer Oge Obasi, hosted by Jumoké Fashola Filmgoers outside Africa may never have heard of Mami Wata, the supernatural being wh...

November 18, 2023 | AFRICAN ODYSSEY

The Battle of the River Plate

Made towards the end of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s creative partnership, The Battle of the River Plate is based on the British Navy’s triumph over a German ‘pocket battleship’, the Gra...

November 18, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

May December

Todd Haynes knows how to write complicated women. Ever since Julianne Moore stepped into the role of a housewife suffering from a mysterious quasi-psychosomatic illness in Haynes’s environmental th...

November 17, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Ill Met by Moonlight

In 1950, Emeric Pressburger read an extract from ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’, Stanley Moss’s account of his adventures on occupied Crete during the Second World War, and immediately optioned its film ri...

November 17, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Centre Stage - The Leading Women of Powell + Pressburger

Complex, memorable, subversive… and arguably on occasion also problematic, the female characters in Powell and Pressburger’s films are never less than fascinating. They were brought to vivid life b...

November 16, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

La Ronde

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film ‘s ending. In Ophuls’ imaginative, highly personal adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play, he added an omniscient narrator/master of ceremoni...

November 14, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Bicycle Thieves

A contemporary review Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, like Rossellini’s Paisa, came to London with a fabulous reputation to live up to, and, in a way, to live down. To Paisa, a film made in a s...

November 14, 2023 | POWER TO THE PEOPLE
HORACE OVÉ’S RADICAL VISION