Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Buñuel updates Octave Mirbeau’s 1890s story to a strangely timeless 1930s and the onset of Fascism, so that Célestine (Jeanne Moreau), newly employed at a rural mansion, fends off the attentions of...

June 2, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

The Big Lebowski

The success of Fargo put to rest a long-held myth about the Coen Brothers: that their films were strictly esoteric or enigmatic. This belief seems to be based partly on the way their earlier films ...

June 2, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Belle de Jour

Adapting Joseph Kessel’s novel about a married bourgeois Parisienne led by idle curiosity to work afternoons in a high-class brothel, Buñuel consistently gives only scant indication as to what is r...

June 2, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Razor Sharp - The Hawksian Woman Revisited

We are pleased to announce that the BFI’s Hires and Sales Manager Jelena Milosavljevic, film critic Christina Newland and film journalist and Editor-at-Large for Empire magazine Helen O’Hara will...

June 1, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

La Mort en ce jardin

When political unrest hits a South American diamond-mining community, a motley group make their escape, only to fall foul of the many dangers of the jungle, not least their own conflicting personal...

June 1, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Chevalier

Set in 18th Century France, Chevalier unfolds the vivid, timely story of the soaring rise and defiant spirit of the musical phenomenon, Joseph Bologne, aka the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The Cheva...

June 1, 2023 | PREVIEW

The 400 Blows

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the greatest films about childhood, Truffaut’s partly autobiographical first feature is also profoundly moving. Forever in tr...

June 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Three Colours - White

Kieślowski on ‘Three Colours: White’ Berlin: 15 February. White premieres in the festival, and turns out to be the trilogy’s scherzo: a black comedy about an unconsummated Polish-French marriage, ...

May 26, 2023 | THE THREE COLOURS TRILOGY

Three Colours - Red

Red closes the Three Colours trilogy – and Kieślowski’s career as a director – on a magisterial note of wish-fulfilment. Each of the film’s four main characters is a distinct centre of interest wit...

May 26, 2023 | THE THREE COLOURS TRILOGY

Three Colours - Blue

Three Colours: Blue is part of a trilogy which bands together three films, Blue, White and Red – the colours of the French flag – under the loose headings Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and can be ...

May 26, 2023 | THE THREE COLOURS TRILOGY

The Old Man Movie - Lactopalypse!

+ Q&A with directors Mikk Mägi and Oskar Lehemaa If the Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer and the South Park crew launched a joint takeover of Aardman Animation, they might come up with something...

May 26, 2023 | PREVIEW

Beau Is Afraid

‘Stop incriminating yourself,’ Amy Ryan’s Grace hisses fiercely, à propos of nothing, at the bewildered protagonist Beau Wassermann over a homely breakfast table. Yet Ari Aster’s third feature, Bea...

May 26, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

A Glitch in the Matrix

+ intro and discussion Simulation theory, or the concept that reality is in fact an artificial simulation, is central to Rodney Ascher’s head-spinning foray into virtual worlds. Utilising a blen...

May 22, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

Best Interests

+ Q&A with Sharon Horgan, Jack Thorne, Niamh Moriarty, Michael Keillor and Sophie Gardiner. Hosted by Benji Wilson. Best Interests is a compelling, moving, thought-provoking fictional drama fr...

May 22, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Phenomena

Contains violence and gore SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. At the time of its release, Phenomena was greeted with a rousing chorus of disapproval, even from Argent...

May 19, 2023 | DARIO ARGENTO
DOORS INTO DARKNESS

Scarface

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Michael Mann on ‘Scarface’ Howard Hawks’s Scarface has a special significance for me because [producer] Marty Bregman called me up, ...

May 17, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Dance, Girl, Dance

Dance, Girl, Dance, a glorious and subversively feminist film from the Golden Age of Hollywood, had inauspicious beginnings. In 1940, RKO had a film in production that was going off the rails – a r...

May 16, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Still Walking

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Japanese, there’s more than one mode of greeting someone as you enter their house during the day. There’s ‘konnichiwa’, for exam...

May 15, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Tenebrae

Contains violence, gore and sexual violence SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. As far removed from the Technicolor phantasmagoria of Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980...

May 13, 2023 | DARIO ARGENTO
DOORS INTO DARKNESS

Abolition

+ intro by Brazilian MP, Benedita da Silva (pre-recorded) and panel discussion with Vanessa Gabriel-Robinson, chair, Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS), and Dr Maria Augusta Arruda (Univ...

May 13, 2023 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

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