BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Black Christmas +
intro by Tara Prem

A bittersweet drama on a familiar theme – the frictions forced to the surface during a Christmas family get-together – Michael Abbensetts’ Black Christmas is an understated and affecting study of r...

October 21, 2023 | TARA PREM
REPRESENTING THE UNSEEN

The Andromeda Strain

‘This is a thrilling plague film from 1971 – an imagining of future events. I’ve loved it since I first saw it.’ Pamela Davies, BFI Member A satellite crashes in a small New Mexico town. Before lo...

October 21, 2023 | MEMBER EXCLUSIVES

The Thief of Bagdad

Producer Alexander Korda originally assigned this Arabian Nights-style adventure – which had been a hit in its 1924 Hollywood version starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr – to the German director Ludwig B...

October 20, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Mean Streets

Ask someone to pick their favourite moment from a film by Martin Scorsese, something defining. Many would cite Robert De Niro’s memorable ‘you talkin’ to me?’ challenge to his own leering, gun-toti...

October 20, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

The Edge of the World

Having made two dozen low budget pot-boilers over the preceding five years, Michael Powell finally got the chance to make his first really personal film with the ambitious drama The Edge of the Wor...

October 20, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Distant Voices Still Lives

Contemporary reviews Terence Davies makes films in instalments. The 100-minute Trilogy – Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration – which was begun in 1976 took eight years to complet...

October 20, 2023 | EVENTS

Casablanca

It’s still the same old story. [Over] 75 years after it was released, Casablanca remains one of the world’s best-loved films. Not just the best-loved, but best-remembered. Many cinephiles can quote...

October 20, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

I Know Where I'm Going!

‘I Know Where I’m Going!’ is a film of extraordinary beauty and emotional power. It means so much to many people – to those members of Powell and Pressburger’s company The Archers who participated ...

October 19, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

The Exiles

Kent Mackenzie first conceived of The Exiles during the making of his short student film Bunker Hill while a student at the University of Southern California. In March 1956 he read an article by Do...

October 19, 2023 | JOANNA HOGG - INFLUENCES

Exhibition

From its outset – a flatly declarative title card leading straight into a shot of D (Viv Albertine, formerly of the punk group The Slits) lying prone, pressed up against a full-length window – Exhi...

October 19, 2023 | INTERNAL REFLECTIONS
THE FILMS OF JOANNA HOGG

Archipelago

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. This may not seem like headline news, exactly: the English upper middle class suffers from emotional repression and may harbour seet...

October 19, 2023 | INTERNAL REFLECTIONS
THE FILMS OF JOANNA HOGG

An American in Paris

When producer Jesse L. Lasky opened the envelope that revealed the name of the 1951 Best Picture Academy Award, he could not hide his disappointment. ‘Oh dear’ he declared, ‘the winner is An Americ...

October 19, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Time (series 2)

+ Q&A with writers Jimmy McGovern and Helen Black, actors Jodie Whittaker, Bella Ramsey and director Andrea Harkin Told through the lens of three very different inmates, Time is a moving and h...

October 18, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Phantom Thread

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Control freaks abound in the films of Paul Thomas Anderson: takes one to know one, as the saying goes. Phantom Thread’s high-end fas...

October 18, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

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...