BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Ticket of No Return

For the BFI season, I had to include Ulrike Ottinger’s Ticket of No Return. I saw it when I was 19, and it had a decisive influence on me in wanting to become a filmmaker. It’s about a woman, an al...

November 12, 2023 | JOANNA HOGG - INFLUENCES

A Hole in Babylon

A Hole in Babylon Based on the real-life Spaghetti House siege, this was a hugely controversial BBC production, with some seeing its mix of drama and real archive footage as a distortion of the tru...

November 12, 2023 | POWER TO THE PEOPLE
HORACE OVÉ’S RADICAL VISION

Resurrected

Produced by Tara Prem and Adrian Hughes, Paul Greengrass’ directorial debut deals with the experiences of a young squaddie suffering from battle fatigue during the Falklands War. After being missin...

November 11, 2023 | TARA PREM
REPRESENTING THE UNSEEN

Is There Anybody Out There?

+ Q&A with director Ella Glendining, hosted by Jack Thorne A festival circuit favourite, this thought-provoking, funny and sensitive documentary makes you stop and re-evaluate. Glendining s...

November 11, 2023 | PREVIEW

The Eternal Daughter

+ Q&A with writer-director Joanna Hogg and actor Tilda Swinton Joanna Hogg is interested in how we are shaped by the rooms we occupy. The starkest example is Exhibition (2014), set in the uniq...

November 10, 2023 | PREVIEW

Girl

+ Q&A with director Adura Onashile, cinematographer Tasha Back and production designer Soraya Gilanni Viljoen Mother and daughter Grace and Ama have established a deep bond that’s protected th...

November 7, 2023 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA PREVIEW

Twice upon a Time

+ intro by James Bell with Andrew Macdonald The only film Pressburger directed alone was this adaptation of a book by his old collaborator Erich Kästner, about identical twins who are separated as...

November 6, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

23 Seconds to Eternity

+ Q&A with producer/director Bill Butt 23 Seconds to Eternity will take viewers on a film journey through the collected music videos and short features produced and directed by Bill Butt in co...

November 6, 2023 | PREVIEW

The TARDIS - The Most Famous Time Machine in the Universe

In a case of fiction eclipsing reality, the TARDIS displaces more cultural water than any genuine police box glimpsed in archive footage or a film like The Blue Lamp (1950), as if C. S. Lewis were ...

November 4, 2023 | DESTINATION TIME TRAVEL
PLAYING WITH TIME IN FILM AND TV

Pressure

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Pressure follows Tony, the British-born son of Trinidadian parents, as he leaves school and encounters prejudice on individual and...

November 3, 2023 | POWER TO THE PEOPLE
HORACE OVÉ’S RADICAL VISION

The Grand Budapest Hotel

‘His world had vanished long before he entered it,’ the aged owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, Mr Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), tells the Author (Jude Law), ‘but he certainly sustained the illusio...

November 3, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Queen's Guards

+ intro by actor Jess Conrad and Josephine Botting, BFI National Archive Curator As Britain’s most original and imaginative filmmaker, Michael Powell’s features have been extensively remastered, ...

November 2, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Orlando

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Virginia Woolf added, and then subtracted, one final line at the end of the manuscript of Orlando (1928), her centuries-spanning fi...

November 2, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

How to Have Sex

+ Q&A with director Molly Manning Walker and actor Mia McKenna-Bruce (Wednesday 1 November only) Tara is 16 and heading to the Cretan coastal town of Malia with her best friends Skye and Em. T...

November 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

The Shining

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Aspiring writer Jack Torrance travels to a remote Colorado hotel with his wife and son to take up the position of winter caretaker....

October 31, 2023 | HALLOWEEN SCREENINGS

Eyes without a Face

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Contains moderate bloody medical horror and violence. A plastic surgeon becomes obsessed with trying to restore his daughter’s fac...

October 31, 2023 | HALLOWEEN SCREENINGS

Time Bandits

+ intro and discussion Terry Gilliam’s family-friendly adventure takes us into the world of Kevin, a young boy whose disillusionment with modern life creates a fascination with knights, kings an...

October 30, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

Queen of Spades

Described by Martin Scorsese as ‘A uniquely haunting film’ and once thought lost forever, The Queen of Spades is the perfect horror tale. It’s 1806 and in St Petersburg, Captain Suvorin (Anton Walb...

October 29, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Michael Powell on ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ There was one nice scene in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing which I shot but later had to cut out; it’s between Godfrey Tearle and Hugh Burden...

October 29, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

The Souvenir Part II

How do you follow a film like The Souvenir (2019)? Joanna Hogg’s unsparing portrait of the relationship between a student filmmaker, Julie (Honor Swinton-Byrne) and an older man, Anthony (Tom Burke...

October 28, 2023 | INTERNAL REFLECTIONS
THE FILMS OF JOANNA HOGG