BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Evil Dead

Sam Raimi on ‘The Evil Dead’ Before I made the first Evil Dead, I had never read an EC comic or H.P. Lovecraft. Although there are very similar themes, especially with Lovecraft: the ‘something dar...

January 5, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Land of Silence and Darkness

The screening on Wednesday 17 January will include a + BSL intro by deaf filmmaker Sam Arnold. Following this screening there will be an opportunity for deaf networking. In an article devoted to L...

January 4, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

The Lady from Shanghai

The older I get, the more convinced I am of Orson Welles’s genius. That may not sound particularly worthy of comment, but I should explain that I’ve always believed he was one of those rare beings ...

January 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Heart of Glass

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Werner Herzog the conquistadorial spirit lives again. He sets out to discover new worlds in the manner of a Renaissance explorer ...

January 4, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Taxi zum Klo

Taxi zum Klo is a largely autobiographical venture, with Frank Ripploh and his former lover Bernd Broaderup reproducing their real-life situation. After a 1978 article in Stern in which he openly a...

January 3, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Psycho

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. This much imitated but never bettered mix of suspense, horror, mystery and black comedy famously begins with a woman suddenly decid...

January 3, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Even Dwarfs Started Small

Jean Cocteau said often that he valued highest those films that were documentaries of unreal events; Werner Herzog’s second feature Even Dwarfs Started Small extends the principle to its logical co...

January 2, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Charulata

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Two hands, a man’s and a woman’s, reach tentatively out to each other. But just before they meet, the frame freezes. Reconciliation...

January 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Signs of Life

Herzog’s highly atmospheric first feature centres on three German soldiers posted, towards the end of WW2, far from military action at a munitions base on the Greek island of Kos. Eventually inerti...

January 1, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Shoot the Pianist

Based on David Goodis’ novel Down There, François Truffaut’s second feature is a breezy New Wave concoction of genre pastiche, playful stylistic tricks and romantic reverie. Aznavour is charismatic...

January 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Fata Morgana + The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner

Werner Herzog’s third feature takes the reductio ad absurdum narrative patterns of his other films to their logical conclusion by dispensing with narrative altogether. Fata Morgana consists exclusi...

January 1, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Basket Case

By the end of 1983, the Scala was using its cinema programme to campaign against the strictures of the Video Recordings Act. Along with The Evil Dead, the similarly banned black comedy horror Baske...

January 1, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Priscilla

If you had somehow forgotten who made Priscilla, the very first shot would set you right. Girlish bare feet, sporting a bright coral pedicure, pad across a bedroom, every step sinking deeper into t...

December 27, 2023 | PREVIEW SCREENINGS

The Boy and the Heron

Toshio Suzuki (Producer and Studio Ghibli President/Co-founder) on ‘The Boy and the Heron’ You and Miyazaki have spoken before about wanting each new film to betray audience expectations of Studi...

December 27, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Fanny and Alexander

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Ingmar Bergman has declared that Fanny and Alexander is to be his last film. There have, it should be noted, b...

December 23, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Carol

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, Haynes’ typically elegant yet acerbic movie charts the intense (yet hesitant and furtive) r...

December 21, 2023 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

A Year in a Field

+ intro and discussion Filmed in solitude, between the winter solstices of 2020 and 2021, this meditation on the natural world and human impact on the landscape raises questions rather than give...

December 18, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

A Woman of Paris

The screening on Sunday 17 December will be introduced by Mark Fuller, Michael Powell expert. Michael Powell interviewed by Kevin Brownlow on ‘A Woman of Paris’ I heard second-hand about the effe...

December 17, 2023 | SILENT CINEMA

Mr. India

+ Q&A with producer Mr Boney Kapoor Mr. India is the only real ‘Bollywood’ film made by Shekhar Kapur, whose earlier film Masoom was more in the style of the parallel Hindi cinema, while his l...

December 17, 2023 | FILM WALLAHS

Tish

Paul Sng, the BIFA-winning director of Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché and Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle, crafts an intimate portrait of Tish Murtha, a working-class photographer from...

December 15, 2023 | NEW RELEASES