BFI Southbank Programme Notes

F for Fake

In 1970 François Reichenbach, with the British journalist Richard Drewett, made Elmyr: The True Picture?, a 40-minute BBC documentary about Elmyr de Hory, the Hungarian faker of 20th-century master...

September 13, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Punch and Judy. Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy

+ intro by Jez Stewart, BFI National Archive Curator If the image of independent British cinema given to the world is that of a rather downbeat, grey-edged, political artform, sustained by its vir...

September 12, 2023 | ART IN THE MAKING

Dead Man's Shoes

+ Q&A with Shane Meadows and producer Mark Herbert Contains strong violence and sexual violence. Nineteen years since its original release, Shane Meadows’ startling fourth feature has lost no...

September 12, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

There Was a Father

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Widely acknowledged as the first great performance in an Ozu film by the director’s regular on-screen collaborator Chishū Ryū, There...

September 11, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

My Little Loves

French artists seem peculiarly attracted to the mysteries of childhood and adolescence. In literature one thinks immediately of the luscious worlds conjured up by Proust and Alain-Fournier, in whic...

September 11, 2023 | LOVE, PAIN AND CINEMA
THE FILMS OF JEAN EUSTACHE

Bronco Bullfrog

+ intro and Q&A with Ian O’Sullivan, BFI Library and actor Roy Haywood Barney Platts-Mills’ debut feature stars an entirely non-professional cast of local teenagers from Stratford, East London...

September 11, 2023 | SENIORS

La Maman et la putain

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Try to imagine a film set in early 70s Paris which definitively distils the emotional changes wrought by the May 1968 events, while...

September 10, 2023 | LOVE, PAIN AND CINEMA
THE FILMS OF JEAN EUSTACHE

The Maltese Falcon

John Huston’s career started erratically; the son of Walter Huston, he began as an actor himself. After several false starts it was not until 1938 that his career in films got under way. For the ne...

September 10, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Late Spring

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A widowed professor lives harmoniously with his grown-up daughter until a meddling aunt intervenes and suggests that it is time for...

September 10, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Beautiful Thing

The mid-1990s was a watershed period for independent gay and lesbian film, not only because of the number of feature and short films being made, but because of the critical interest which accompani...

September 10, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

The Killers

Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner star in Robert Siodmak’s gritty and muscular film noir. Told entirely in flashback, a life insurance investigator pieces together the tragic story of ‘the Swede’ (Bur...

September 9, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Good Morning

Devoted to both the profound necessity and the sublime silliness of gratuitous social interchange, Good Morning (Ohayo) is a rather subtler and grander work than might appear at first. Commonly ref...

September 9, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

A Story of Floating Weeds

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The main character in A Story of Floating Weeds, Kihachi Ichikawa, is an echo of the protagonist of Passing Fancy, though he is neit...

September 8, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

The Only Son

A widow makes sacrifices to ensure her son gets an education. Years later, when she visits him, she is surprised by how his life has turned out and how little he has told her of it. The son in turn...

September 8, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Ace in the Hole

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Billy Wilder was often called cynical but compared to Ace in the Hole the rest of his output is a mush-pot of human kindness. Possib...

September 8, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Tokyo Twilight

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Tokyo Twilight (1957) is still one of Ozu’s most moving films, and perhaps the blackest and most desolate in tone. It concerns a fa...

September 7, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Past Lives

This outstanding first feature by Celine Song is a beautiful, deeply romantic modern love story that embraces destiny, nostalgia and the immigrant experience. Na Young’s family emigrated from Seoul...

September 7, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Face

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Face never pulls its punches about the social forces behind self-serving attitudes. Yet it also never allows its strongly left-wing ...

September 7, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

The Wind Will Carry Us

Abbas Kiarostami has said recently that he’s no longer interested in filming in interiors with artificial light. In The Wind Will Carry Us his devotion to landscape as cinematic spectacle seems, at...

September 6, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Harmonium

Director’s Statement This film is linked to one of my previous films, Hospitalité, which came out in 2010. They’re like two sides of the same coin. Initially, Hospitalité was only supposed to be a...

September 6, 2023 | KOJI FUKADA