Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

Exotica

‘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 ...

Scarface

‘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 ...