BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Polite Society

+ intro with writer-director Nida Manzoor 16-year-old Ria is an aspiring stuntwoman, dreaming of her future excelling in the film business while her older sister Lena becomes a world famous artist...

April 21, 2023 | PREMIERE

Full Circle
The Haunting of Julia

+ Q&A with Richard Loncraine and Simon Fitzjohn When the cameras finally started rolling on the production of Full Circle in London on 8 November 1976, it is unlikely that producer Peter Fett...

April 19, 2023 | EVENTS

Alan Bennett in conversation

Few writers have successfully mined northern culture and specific northern speech patterns as Alan Bennett. Growing up in Leeds, he listened in on the chatter of his relatives, absorbing the patter...

April 17, 2023 | EVENTS

Rita, Sue and Bob Too

‘The film that turned the festival blue’ was one shocked tabloid’s verdict on Alan Clarke’s bleakly bawdy comedy about a married man bedding his teen babysitters, which scandalised the Brighton Fil...

April 16, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

The Man without Desire

+ intro by Josephine Botting, BFI Curator and author of Adrian Brunel and British Cinema of the 1920s , published by Edinburgh University Press. One of the stranger films to emerge from Britain in...

April 16, 2023 | SILENT CINEMA

11 Minutes

Skolimowski’s formidable conceptual and technical skills get their most intensive workout here, as initially unconnected stories (an attempted seduction, a crime, a chase, a painting in progress) g...

April 16, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Play for Today - Comedians

‘Comedy is medicine. Not sugared sweeties to rot yer teeth.’ In the early Seventies, a regular Saturday night ratings winner was Granada’s cheap and cheerful half-hour show The Comedians. Sporting...

April 15, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Raging Bull

Sitting in a movie theatre as the credits rolled on The Death Collector (1975), Raging Bull’s casting director Cis Corman felt they could have found their Joey LaMotta. The film hadn’t made much of...

April 14, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

One Fine Morning

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. The light-touch naturalism of Mia Hansen-Løve films is always rooted in autobiography. One Fine Morning stems from her experience o...

April 14, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Take This Waltz

28-year-old Margot is happily married to Lou, a good-natured cookbook author. But when Margot encounters their handsome neighbour Daniel, the mutual attraction between the two is undeniable. Writte...

April 13, 2023 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

Lady in the Dark

Paramount production notes for ‘Lady in the Dark’ As a play, Lady in the Dark opened on Broadway on 23 January 1941. It comes to the screen as one of the most lavish and spectacular productions in...

April 12, 2023 | GINGER ROGERS
ALL THAT SASS

Dead Ringers

+ panel and Q&A with Rachel Weisz, Alice Birch and Britne Oldford. Chaired by Edith Bowman. A modern take on David Cronenberg’s 1988 thriller starring Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers will feature R...

April 11, 2023 | TV PREVIEWS

The Arbor

Clio Barnard on ‘The Arbor’ Let’s talk about Andrea Dunbar first, and why she was of interest to you, in terms of where you come from yourself. I grew up in Yorkshire, near Bradford, so it was a ...

April 11, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Code Unknown

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A youth tosses a wrapper into the lap of a Romanian woman begging in Paris… Haneke’s exploration of the various consequences of this...

April 9, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Priest

Priest arrived as the Catholic Church was under intense media scrutiny, with an ongoing ‘paedophile priest’ scandal and the ‘outing’ of a number of allegedly homosexual priests by gay pressure grou...

April 8, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

The Lightship

Jerzy Skolimowski on ‘The Lightship’ Somebody brought my attention to Siegfried Lenz’s book, and I thought there was great potential there for a film. There are similarities to Joseph Conrad’s Vict...

April 8, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady bestows on the world one of the greatest heroines in fiction. As read by Campion’s film, Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) is a gauche and difficult young American on the brink o...

April 7, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Letter to Brezhnev

Frank Clarke on ‘Letter to Brezhnev’ There were so many strands and people, so much serendipity and sheer force of will which went into the making of Letter to Brezhnev that, looking back at it now...

April 7, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Pickpocket

Uncomplainingly jobless in late-50s Paris, Michel starts stealing from strangers, for reasons unclear even to himself. He spouts vague theories about exceptional individuals being above the law – b...

April 6, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Obsession

+ panel and Q&A with Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Richard Armitage, Charlie Murphy, Indira Varma and Rish Shah. Chaired by Emma Bullimore. This thrilling and seductive limited series about erotic obs...

April 6, 2023 | TV PREVIEWS