BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Citizen Kane

Andrew Sarris on the 50th anniversary of the opening of ‘Citizen Kane’ Citizen Kane erupted on to the screen, at least as a long-lived figure of speech, on 1 May 1941 at New York’s Palace Theater. ...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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2001 A Space Odyssey

Kubrick’s epic contemplation of the nature and origins of humanity, completed a full year before the first moon landing, remains one of cinema’s greatest technical feats and a highpoint in the film...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Tokyo Story

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Ozu’s gently melancholy but hugely moving masterpiece has an elderly country couple visit their grown-up children in post-war Tokyo;...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Shy Radicals

With intro and discussion A portrait of artist and activist Hamja Ahsan, commander-in-chief of the introvert resistance. Shy Radicals is a portrait of award-winning artist, activist and author Ha...

March 4, 2023 | BUSTING THE BIAS

Seven Samurai

When Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai premiered in Japan on 26 April 1954, it was the most expensive domestic production ever, costing 125 million Yen (approximately $350,000), almost five times the ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Searchers

Cinema’s poet of the Wild West, John Ford already had countless westerns (among over 100 films) under his belt before reteaming with regular star John Wayne for this disturbing story of racism, obs...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Playtime

Monsieur Hulot finds himself lost in a futuristic Paris when he stumbles upon a great exhibition showcasing the latest in designs and gadgets. His encounters with an American tourist group and, in ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Man with a Movie Camera

‘Down with bourgeois fairytale plots and scenarios – long live life as it is!’ So said Dziga Vertov, for whom documentary was the only true revolutionary form as it freed film from false scenarios ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Ivor Cutler and Friends

‘Anyone can be seen to be eccentric if you take him out of his milieu and put him into someone else’s.’ – Ivor Cutler, 1974 Ivor Cutler, the poet, singer, musician, teacher, painter, illustrator, ...

March 4, 2023 | IVOR CUTLER AND THE ECCENTRIC MISCELLANY

Doctor Who - The Sea Devils

+ Q&A with Katy Manning and Hugh Futcher Making ‘The Sea Devils’ The popularity of the eponymous subterranean menaces from series seven’s Doctor Who and the Silurians hadn’t gone unnoticed by ...

March 4, 2023 | EVENTS

Apocalypse Now
Final Cut

In the year of its 40th anniversary, Francis Ford Coppola’s acid-drenched odyssey to the dark heart of the Vietnam war is returning to the big screen, in what has been billed Apocalypse Now: Final ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Singin' in the Rain

It would be hard to find a more enjoyable, durable musical than this homage to Hollywood’s bumpy transition from silent to talking pictures. Gene Kelly is at his charismatic best, especially during...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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La Règle du jeu

‘For us there was only one French director, and that was Jean Renoir’, said Claude Chabrol, while François Truffaut called Renoir ‘the greatest filmmaker in the world’. New Wave directors, as criti...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The eruption of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire at 30th place, the highest new entry in the poll, mirrors the meteoric ri...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Persona

In many ways Bergman’s most avant-garde and radical film, Persona is ostensibly about a great stage actor (Ullmann) who has mysteriously withdrawn into silence and travels to a remote island to rec...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Do the Right Thing

During the hottest day of the year, Mookie (Lee) travels around his predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood making deliveries for the local pizzeria run by Italian American Sal (Aiello). As the ...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Close

Lukas Dhont on ‘Close’ Following the glowing reception of your debut film Girl , first in Cannes in May 2018 and then globally, when did you get a chance to start thinking about making your next o...

March 3, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Busting the Bias
Opening Night

An illustrated talk + ECLECTIC: Shorts Programme, an evening celebrating Disability visibility and filmmaking. Andrew Miller MBE and current chair of the BFI’s Disability Screen Advisory Group wil...

March 3, 2023 | BUSTING THE BIAS

The War of the Roses

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. US cinema had quite a run of prestigious, serious-minded relationship crisis movies in the 1970s and 80s (Kramer vs. Kramer, Shoot ...

March 2, 2023 | MEMBER PICKS

Taxi Driver

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Perhaps the place to begin is with John Hinckley III, the man who, in 1981, tried to kill President Ronald Reagan so that, as the de...

March 2, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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