BFI Southbank Programme Notes

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

All We Imagine as Light

At the end of Jules Dassin’s 1948 noir The Naked City, a voiceover announces: ‘There are eight million stories in the naked city and this was one of them.’ Dassin, shooting under the influence of I...

November 29, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Ballymurphy Precedent

The screening on Tuesday 26 November will be introduced by director Callum Macrae ‘A landmark film. The sheer humanity makes the crimes committed and the justice denied unforgettable.’ – John Pil...

November 26, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Bird

Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey) focuses on life in working-class England, where 12-year-old Bailey seeks to escape from her tumultuous life through a friendship with a mysterious strang...

November 25, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

Hard Target

+ intro by Ti Singh, BFI FAN season producer (Wednesday 27 November only) John Woo’s first US film paired him with the ‘muscles from Brussels’, Belgian action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose fla...

November 24, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

The Coming War on China

With nuclear catastrophe, whether by accident or design, an ever-more chilling global threat, John Pilger’s 2016 film has renewed relevance and urgency. At a preview screening at BFI Southbank he i...

November 23, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the Ice Cold War + Flying the Flag – Arming the World

Inspired by Jill Chen Louis’s book The Cola Wars, John Pilger’s Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the Ice Cold War tells the story of the struggle between ‘those giants of carbonation and regurgitation, Coca-C...

November 23, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Black Box Diaries

+ Q&A with director Shiori Ito We are delighted to announce that following this event, director Shiori Ito will join us for a book signing located outside of the Blue Room. Copies of Shiori’s ...

November 22, 2024 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

District B13

+ intro by Chee Keong Cheung, writer, director, producer and CEO of Action Xtreme (Wednesday 20 November only) This dystopian actioner follows the same blueprint as the earlier Taxi: a cop and a c...

November 20, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

Year Zero - The Silent Death of Cambodia + Breaking the Silence - Truth and Lies in the War on Terror

John Pilger’s shocking 1979 documentary Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia alerted the world to the horrors wrought by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had come to power in the turmoil followi...

November 18, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY