BFI Southbank Programme Notes

A Time to Live and a Time to Die

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A Summer at Grandpa’s, which Hou Hsiao-Hsien made in 1984, is his sunniest picture, a nostalgic recollection of a childhood that was...

April 14, 2025 | Myriad Voices
Reframing Taiwan New Cinema

Red Line 7000

I was trying to do something, I tried an experiment. I had three good stories about the race track – I used to race, I know it pretty well – but none of them would make a picture, so I thought mayb...

April 14, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

Okja

Bong Joon Ho on ‘Okja’ It was quite strange: three different ideas came together seamlessly. Some 16 or 17 years ago, when I’d finished my first feature, I had the idea for a story about a little ...

April 12, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

Goodbye to the Past

Although Wojciech Has had already featured strong female characters in his films, (notably Maria Wachowiak’s Lidka in 1958’s Farewells), his fourth feature Goodbye to the Past – also known as Parti...

April 11, 2025 | The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has

Mother

Bong Joon Ho on ‘Mother’ What was it about mothers and the maternal instinct that you wanted to explore in this film? I always try to look for another side to that which we always praise or worsh...

April 9, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

The Merry Monarch

+ intro by Josephine Botting, BFI Curator SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Contemporary reviews Emil Jannings as a jovial royal buffoon in a fantasy-extravaganza. ...

April 9, 2025 | Projecting the Archive

Cheyenne Autumn

The Iron Horse to Cheyenne Autumn… what a career it is! John Ford’s world is a reincarnation of the pioneer spirit recollected and diffused by time and memory: the coming of the railroads, the insu...

April 9, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

One Room Tenants

While The Noose (1957) was set in the then present and Farewells (1958) in 1939 and 1944, Wojciech Has’s third feature One Room Tenants (also known as Roomers and Roommates) goes back further, to t...

April 7, 2025 | The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has

The Host

The Host provides a perfect introduction to several of the key facets of Bong Joon Ho’s filmmaking that wind their way through his entire oeuvre and make the films feel distinctly his. First is his...

April 5, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

Hulk

‘One of the finest superhero films ever made, infused with complexities of comic book mythology, it remains a misunderstood epic that was ahead of its time.’ – Samrat M, BFI Member At first glance...

April 4, 2025 | Member Picks

Farewells

The title of Wojciech Has’s second feature is given in the plural – appropriately, because there are numerous farewells threaded throughout its length. Some farewells are bid between people, others...

April 4, 2025 | The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has

Volver

Pedro Almodóvar has let his hair go grey. Though his bushy locks remained suspiciously dark well into his fifties, now ‘the snows of time have silvered his temples.’ This poetic description comes f...

April 3, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Parasite

Last year at Cannes, Lee Chang-dong held up a magnifying glass to Korean society and unveiled his critique on the one per cent vs the 99 per cent in Burning. Now it’s Bong Joon-ho’s turn. Of course...

April 3, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

The Noose

Although less known internationally than it deserves to be, Wojciech Has’s The Noose (1957) was arguably the strongest feature debut made in Poland between the rebirth of the country’s national ci...

April 2, 2025 | The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has

A Hole in the Head

April 2, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

Daisies

When Věra Chytilová died in 2014 at the age of 85, tributes remembered the director as a vibrant innovator, whose uncompromising vision in a decidedly male-run industry made her known as the ‘First...

April 2, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

The Tiger of Eschnapur

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In 1958 West German producer Artur Brauner offered Fritz Lang the opportunity to make a new film based on Das Indische Grabmal, scri...

April 1, 2025 | You Must Remember This Presents...
“The Old Man Is Still Alive”

Memories of Murder

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Memories of Murder is based on a series of unsolved murders that took place between 1986-91 in provincial South Korea: ten women wer...

March 31, 2025 | Bong Joon Ho
Power and Paradox

Duckweed (aka Floating Weeds)

Part of the Eleven Women TV series, Duckweed marked Edward Yang’s directorial debut following his return to Taiwan. Co-producers Sylvia Chang and Chen Chun-tian envisioned a platform for emerging t...

March 31, 2025 | Myriad Voices
Reframing Taiwan New Cinema

Nope

In the wake of the success of Get Out and Us, both of which disrupted and redefined the horror genre in singular ways, Jordan Peele was eager to expand his cinematic canvas, embrace a challenge unl...

March 15, 2025 | BLACK RODEO
A HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WESTERN