BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Spring in a Small Town

Fei Mu is considered part of the Second Generation of Chinese filmmakers, memorably captured in Centre Stage (aka Ruan Lingyu, 1991), Stanley Kwan’s biopic of actress Ruan Lingyu. The Second Genera...

October 29, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The Passion of Remembrance + Step Forward Youth

Almost 40 years after it was first made, the Sankofa collective’s The Passion of Remembrance remains salient. The film is a grand tapestry filled with allusions to the intersectional concerns, moti...

October 29, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Remembering Terence Davies

We are pleased to announce Mark Kermode will be joined by actors Debi Jones and Ann Mitchell, cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, producers Sol Papadopoulos, Roy Boulter and Sean O’Connor, writer ...

October 28, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

The Long Day Closes

The screening on Wednesday 19 November will be introduced by season curator Ben Roberts ‘This is the last of the autobiographical films I shall do; perhaps I’ve changed. When I was that young, tho...

October 28, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Of Time and the City

There is something mysterious about Terence Davies’ Liverpool from the outset: at the heart of this meditation on the city lies a tension, between urban change as a process that is brutal and unrem...

October 26, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

The Neon Bible

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review No director – probably not even Quentin Tarantino – is more thoroughly saturated in popular culture than Teren...

October 25, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Johnny Guitar

It starts like any other western, with a lone man riding along a rocky trail. Before the scene can settle into a familiar rhythm, explosions blast through the mountains and workmen swarm around the...

October 25, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The House of Mirth

Terence Davies on ‘The House of Mirth’ How did the idea for The House of Mirth originate? I first read the novel about 15 years ago. And then about five years ago I went to Channel 4 – David Auki...

October 24, 2025 | Re-releases

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Terence Davies makes films in instalments. The 100-minute Trilogy – Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration – which was begun in 1976 took eight years to complete. It won the 1984 BF...

October 23, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Crooklyn

In an article for Sight and Sound, cultural theorist bell hooks famously referred to Crooklyn as a failure of ‘counter-hegemonic representation’. Originally pitched to mainstream audiences as a fam...

October 22, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Camila

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A contemporary review Camila gains much of its power from the circumstances of its production. Its story of a tragic love affair be...

October 22, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The Terence Davies Trilogy

The screening on Tuesday 21 October will be introduced by season curator Ben Roberts In 1977, as new students at the National Film School, the first thing we had to do was watch one another’s fil...

October 21, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Enamorada

We’re delighted to confirm this screening will be of the BFI Archive’s brand new 35mm print made with funding from the National Lottery and the additional support of donors to our Keep Film on Film...

October 21, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

7th Heaven

The screening at the [2018] BFI London Film Festival of Frank Borzage’s 1927 masterpiece 7th Heaven in a new restoration was cause for rejoicing. But Borzage, who directed movies from 1913 to the e...

October 20, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

Brief Encounter

The 80th Anniversary screening on Sunday 16 November will include a discussion with theatre director Emma Rice, filmmaker Barnaby Thompson and writer Oliver Soden SPOILER WARNING The following not...

October 20, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The Counsellor

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. As Chekhov famously remarked, ‘If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired...

October 1, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

The Last Duel

A concern for truth lies at the heart of Sir Ridley Scott’s new epic film The Last Duel and it follows a thin red line connecting all his period films from The Duellists (1977) to Robin Hood (2010)...

September 29, 2025 | Ridley Scott
Building Cinematic Worlds

Missing Believed Wiped
Associated-Rediffusion Special

Studio 5 The opening of Associated-Rediffusion’s Studio 5 was a BIG deal. So big that the opening itself was televised and we were given a guided tour of the studio and a look at the rehearsals for...

September 27, 2025 | Associated-Rediffusion
The UK’s First Groundbreaking TV Franchise

Ready Steady Go!

In the early 1960s, as pop music became the vanguard of a newly developing and revolutionary artistic and cultural movement, television producers began to tackle the task of inventing a format to c...

September 26, 2025 | Associated-Rediffusion
The UK’s First Groundbreaking TV Franchise

The Ice Storm

With its spare, circular story line, the ability to crystallise so much of what it is about in its visuals, and an exceptional cast delivering the most precise of spoken lines, The Ice Storm is cin...

September 26, 2025 | Re-releases