BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Shop around the Corner

Ernst Lubitsch grew up in Berlin as the son of the Russian Jewish émigré owner of a dressmaking company. He knew the world of shops and they feature often in his films. Perhaps witnessing the patte...

December 14, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Notes on a Scandal

‘People have always trusted me with their secrets. But who do I trust with mine?’ (Barbara Covett, Notes on a Scandal) Two women caught up in a drama of need and betrayal are at the heart of this ...

December 14, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

Eyes Wide Shut

Jan Harlan (executive producer): Stanley’s idea was to show a modern hell, a very abstract concept, a hell into which people enter out of boredom – money and wealth won’t do it any longer. Did he s...

December 14, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg enjoys a legendary place as an all-but-unique curiosity in French cinema – the film for which the epithet ‘bittersweet’ was invented, less a musical (though French examp...

December 13, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Carol

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, Haynes’ typically elegant yet acerbic movie charts the intense (yet hesitant and furtive) r...

December 12, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

+ intro by Justin Johnson, BFI Lead Programmer (Wednesday 11 December) According to legend, the idea for Life of Brian stemmed from a throw-away remark by Eric Idle during an interview shortly aft...

December 11, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Apartment

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Wilder’s much-lauded classic is a film of contradictions: a romantic comedy about suicide and adultery, at once glaringly ‘Hollywoo...

December 10, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Tangerine

It’s Christmas Eve and at a donut shop in Hollywood a couple of transgender sex workers meet up to discuss a problem one of them faces. Soon, questions of infidelity, the fine line between performa...

December 9, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Iris

+ extended intro by Sir Richard Eyre and Dame Judi Dench (8 December only) ‘Essentially, Iris is about forms of love and the way in which love changes and love endures,’ explains director Richard ...

December 8, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

Just a Boys' Game + The Insurance Man

There can be no better justification for the modus operandi of the BBC drama department of the 1960s and 70s than the discovery of Peter McDougall. The most original Scottish voice of the era, McDo...

December 7, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

The Ploughman's Lunch

Ian McEwan on ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’ Could you tell me something about how you came to write The Ploughman’s Lunch and to work with Richard Eyre? We made a film for television [The Imitation Gam...

December 6, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

Oldboy

When he released Oldboy in 2003, Park Chan-wook was a mainstream filmmaker in his native South Korea, having broken box-office records with his 2000 political thriller Joint Security Area. To inter...

December 5, 2024 | ECHOES IN TIME
KOREAN FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE AND NEW CINEMA

Key Scholar Lecture
Laugh Together, Weep Alone - South Korean Cinema’s Ethical Ambiguities

In the latest in this series of lectures featuring world-leading scholars, Professor Steve Choe from San Francisco State University will address how key works from the New Korean Cinema respond to ...

December 5, 2024 | ECHOES IN TIME
KOREAN FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE AND NEW CINEMA

Fanny and Alexander

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Ingmar Bergman has declared that Fanny and Alexander is to be his last film. There have, it should be noted, b...

December 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

When Harry Met Sally

+ intro by Ruby McGuigan, BFI Programme and Acquisitions (Wednesday 4 December only) When Harry Met Sally… is so much more than a faked orgasm and a punchline. Not only does it offer many more ple...

December 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Jeremy Thomas on David Bowie and ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’ After Oshima saw Bowie in The Elephant Man on Broadway, in 1980, he asked him to be part of his next film. How did you get involved?...

December 3, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

My Night with Maud

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Eric Rohmer had made two features and a sizeable number of shorts and documentaries before My Night with Maud (1969), a mature and c...

December 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Goryeojang

Bong Joon Ho on Kim Ki-young I discovered Kim’s films in the 1990s. In Korea it was only after military rule ended at the end of the 1980s that a proper film archive was established, and it became ...

December 2, 2024 | ECHOES IN TIME
KOREAN FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE AND NEW CINEMA

Little Women

Across disparate countries and radically different eras, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has come to life in a million different ways. It is a book that is unsparing in its depiction of the way th...

December 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Brutalist

The end titles of Brady Corbet’s new film The Brutalist unroll to the unlikely needle drop of ‘One for You, One for Me’ by Italian pop duo La Bionda. The 1978 disco hit smacks of deliberate and tri...

November 30, 2024 | PREVIEW