Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

American Gangster

The legend of heroin smuggler/family man/death dealer/civic leader Frank Lucas was first chronicled in a New York Magazine article by journalist Mark Jacobson. In 2000, executive producer Nicholas ...

September 6, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

A Good Year

Peter Mayle is a native Brit who abandoned a successful advertising career and reinvented himself as a best-selling author and novelist. He has been writing about the good life in the South of Fran...

September 5, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Battleship Potemkin

Marking the film’s 100th anniversary, Eisenstein’s legendary drama of rebellion and revolution returns to the big screen with a celebrated score from the Pet Shop Boys. During the Russian Revolutio...

September 5, 2025 | Re-releases

Être et avoir

Nicolas Philibert on ‘Être et avoir’ In Spring 2000, I began thinking about a project about rural life, and I began my research by having meetings with farmers on the edge of bankruptcy… But, in t...

September 1, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Electra Glide in Blue

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 21, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

White of the Eye

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 20, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Central Station

In 1991 the renowned director Hector Babenco declared that ‘Brazilian cinema is dead’. Argentine-born, but a naturalised Brazilian citizen, Babenco was lamenting a calamitous turn of events for his...

August 15, 2025 | Re-releases

A New Leaf

+ intro by Aga Baranowska, BFI Contextual Events Programmer Elaine May is nobody’s idea of obscure. This birdlike woman began pecking away at American mores in the 1950s as part of a hip, witty do...

August 13, 2025 | Seniors

Mishima - A Life in Four Chapters

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 13, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

The Wrong Arm of the Law

The set-up for The Wrong Arm of the Law is a familiar one, with comic thieves conflicting with an equally comic police force. Nevertheless, this is a genuinely imaginative film, upholding a brisk c...

August 12, 2025 | In Character
The Films of Peter Sellers

Performance

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 9, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Dr. Strangelove or
How I Learned
to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb

When Dr. Strangelove was released, many people assumed its humour derived chiefly from Terry Southern, who was strongly associated with 1960s’ counter-culture. Kubrick insisted that the satire was ...

August 9, 2025 | In Character
The Films of Peter Sellers

Diva

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 9, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Carnival of Souls

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 6, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

The American Friend

Faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Highsmith for most of its way, The American Friend suddenly ditches the novel and gallops cavalierly through a hundred-odd pages (more than a third of th...

August 5, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Being There

If the perfect fool of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, who seems to rise by sheer weightlessness to the highest office in the land, has a predecessor in the comic literature of the United States, it ...

August 3, 2025 | In Character
The Films of Peter Sellers

Johnny Guitar

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

August 1, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Calendar

Amongst Atom Egoyan’s finest achievements and representative of his interest in mediated memory and loss, Calendar finds the director playing a Canadian photographer who, while on an assignment sho...

August 1, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Clockers

‘What is a cult film? A cult film is one which has a passionate following but does not appeal to everybody. Just because a movie is a cult movie does not automatically guarantee quality. Some cult ...

July 26, 2025 | Moviedrome
Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen

Swimming Pool

A repressed British crime novelist travels to the south of France for a sojourn at her publisher’s summer house, where she hopes to write her next book. However, the peaceful stay is interrupted by...

July 25, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

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