BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Substance

The bravura opening of Coralie Fargeat’s bonkers body horror The Substance tracks, via time-lapse photography, the installation and subsequent deterioration of a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. At fir...

September 24, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

+ intro by Jason Wood, BFI Executive Director of Public Programmes & Audiences SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review The story of Billy the Ki...

September 24, 2024 | RESTORED

Went the Day Well?

+ intro by James Bell, Senior Curator, BFI National Archive ‘The critics, led by Miss Lejeune, literally pulled us to pieces,’ Cavalcanti wrote in his note for the Irish Film Society screening. In...

September 23, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

The Thief and the Cobbler
A Moment in Time

+ Q&A with Imogen Sutton Produced over 25 years and inspired by Middle Eastern folk tales and Persian miniatures, The Thief and the Cobbler is a legendary work among animation fans. It was unr...

September 22, 2024 | EVENTS

Station Six Sahara

Station Six Sahara is a big revelation. It’s minimal: they’re in the desert and these men are stuck together. I always found it to be very close to The King of Comedy, because it’s the comedy of ma...

September 22, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

The Damned

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With its potent mix of mysterious scientific experiments, radioactive children, portents of dystopian doom and biker gang violence, ...

September 21, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

The Hunger

The Hunger helped challenge my perception of what dark fantasy could be. It didn’t have to be epic in scale, but by employing a quieter register and mood it was possible to weave an entrancing stor...

September 19, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Zardoz

+ Q&A with writer-director John Boorman SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The head is a ferocious Greek mask, hacked from stone, its eyes fixed in a malevolent, ...

September 18, 2024 | EVENTS

The Shout

+ Q&A with filmmakers Daniel Kokotajlo and Mark Jenkin (Wednesday 18 September only) Jeremy Thomas on ‘The Shout’ I came back to England via a short stay in America, and a friend called Michae...

September 18, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

The Servant

+ intro by Ruby McGuigan, BFI Programme and Acquisitions (Wednesday 18 September only) SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a novel by Robin Maugham, The S...

September 18, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

White Lady + Children of the Stones

A woman in white holds a scythe and watches over a father repairing his rural home with his two daughters. I love White Lady – not just for its symbolic storytelling and rural setting, but for its ...

September 16, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Mandy

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Nightmare is never far away in Alexander Mackendrick’s films. It’s there in the street-pursuit of Sidney Stratton in The Man in the ...

September 16, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Terence Fisher Double Bill
To the Public Danger + Stolen Face

To the Public Danger Before he directed his series of horror classics for Hammer, Terence Fisher demonstrated his versatility across a range of genres. His early short To the Public Danger is an at...

September 15, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

My Life as a Courgette

A stop-motion family animation, indebted to Ken Loach, with the curious title My Life as a Courgette: that’s already quite a billing to live up to, but Swiss director Claude Barras’s first feature ...

September 15, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

Uncle Silas

Uncle Silas and Maud Ruthyn first appeared in 1864 as a serial in the Dublin University Magazine, before being published in three volumes as Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. The author, Joseph...

September 14, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Hue and Cry

In the forties, before the establishment of the specialist Children’s Film Foundation, the commercial arm of the British film industry still sometimes made films especially for children, and Hue an...

September 14, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

A Warning to the Curious + Baby

When you’re in the mood, there’s nothing quite like a 1970s British ‘curiosity killed the cat’ creeper. Don’t mess with weird effigies and cursed relics buried in the ground or walls of your new ho...

September 13, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

My Favourite Cake

Writers/Directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha on ‘My Favourite Cake’ This charming and quietly subversive tale from Iran delivers on all levels. Lonely Mahin is 70 and struggling. Her hu...

September 13, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Eraserhead

In his first film, Eraserhead, David Lynch created a world from which everything has been stripped away except for the anxiety at its heart. Henry Spencer tramps numbly across a ruined industrial l...