BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Pather Panchali

Ray’s celebrated debut presents the struggles of a rural Bengali family with an intimacy, compassion and profound humanism that announced a major new voice in world cinema. It mirrors the commitmen...

October 18, 2023 | POWER TO THE PEOPLE
HORACE OVÉ’S RADICAL VISION

French Cancan

Le plus beau métier du monde is how Danglard, the impresario figure in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan, describes the world of showbiz and spectacle that is his first love – ‘the most wonderful profess...

October 18, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Fire Raisers

After a prolific run of ‘quota’ films, Powell signed to Gaumont-British on a four-film deal, where he benefited from better facilities and higher budgets. His first production was this atmospheric ...

October 18, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger’s delirious melodrama is one of the most erotic films ever to emerge from British cinema, let alone in the repressed 1940s – it was released just two years after David Lean’s...

October 18, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

Made a decade or two earlier, Lewin’s marvellous fantasy might at least have stood some chance of being annexed to the surrealist pantheon. Instead critics, surprisingly unanimously, dismissed it a...

October 17, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

His Lordship

The second production of Powell and Jerry Jackson’s Westminster Films company, His Lordship stands as a fascinating oddity – a musical satire of the British class system that, although received poo...

October 17, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

October 16, 2023 | INTERNAL REFLECTIONS
THE FILMS OF JOANNA HOGG

Rynox + Hotel Splendide

During the 1930s, Michael Powell worked on 31 feature films, yet most of these are little known. This can be attributed mainly to two factors: first, they belong broadly to that category of films c...

October 16, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

A Matter of Life and Death

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Michael Powell’s experience of working on The Thief of Bagdad (1940) had given him a strong taste for spectacle and fantasy; but bet...

October 16, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

The Age of Innocence

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Martin Scorsese on ‘The Age of Innocence’ Set in New York in the 1870s, The Age of Innocence tells the story of Newland Archer, who ...

October 16, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Twilight City

+ intro by BFI National Archive Curator, Xavier Pillai Tender letters between a recent UK arrival and her mother back in Dominica, juxtaposed with choice archival footage and personal recollection...

October 3, 2023 | TOGETHER
THE LONDON FILMS OF LORENZA MAZZETTI

R.M.N.

Writer-director Cristian Mungiu packs a lot into three letters. RMN is the internationally recognised abbreviation denoting Romania, and it also stands for rezonanță magnetică nucleară (in English,...

September 29, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

The Old Oak

If at any time in the last 60 years you were asked the question, ‘Where do I look to find British political cinema?’, the quick, if reductive, answer was one name: Ken Loach. That the long stretch ...

September 29, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Three Little Birds

+ Q&A with Sir Lenny Henry and directors Charles McDougall and Yero Timi-Biu and composer Benjamin Kwasi Burrell, hosted by Miquita Oliver. Spirited, moving, funny and utterly heartfelt, Three...

September 28, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Good Morning

+ intro and discussion Following the popular Relaxed Screenings as part of our Kurosawa season, we return to Japan with a link to this month’s Ozu programme. The director’s pared-back aesthetic...

September 25, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

Danny Dyer in Conversation

Danny Dyer’s career has been nothing if not eclectic, beginning his career under the guidance of playwright Harold Pinter. His breakout role in Human Traffic catapulted him into the limelight, maki...

September 25, 2023 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Mona Lisa

Contains strong violence, sexual violence and racist terms. A bunch of chrysanthemums is hurled at a slammed front door, smartly followed by a dustbin. Enraged by the wife who wants rid of him, Ge...

September 24, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

An Autumn Afternoon

Critics, especially auteur critics, tend to take an artist’s last work as a summing up, the goal toward which every other work has moved. The impulse is hard to resist with respect to An Autumn Aft...

September 24, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Sexy Beast

Contains strong violence. If Scum’s Carlin made it to adulthood, he might have resembled Gal, an ex-con enjoying life in the south of Spain. But the arrival of terrifying gang enforcer Don Logan d...

September 23, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

A Year in a Field

Winter Solstice 2020: with his camera and tripod, BAFTA winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris began filming each day in a field near his home. ‘I’ve never glued my hand to a road, or st...

September 22, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Programme Notes