Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

La Belle Noiseuse

The success of La Belle Noiseuse makes it plausible that audiences see in it a qualified but nonetheless comforting reaffirmation of the values not only of Art, but also of European art cinema. Ind...

La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz on ‘La Haine’ La Haine is 25 years old. Since Mathieu Kassovitz’s debut first screened there’s arguably not been another French film that has had as significant an impact. In the...

The Big Sleep

As the epitome of a Howard Hawks movie, The Big Sleep exhibited all the varied facets of his technical dramatic skill. Scenes are edited sharply and economically, designed to give viewers all the n...

Belle toujours

I wasn’t expecting all that much from this follow-up to Buñuel’s 1967 masterpiece Belle de Jour, but any reservations disappeared the moment Michel Piccoli appeared on screen, twinkling with the ki...

Asteroid City

+ Q&A with director Wes Anderson A one-car pioneer town, somewhere in the parched wilds of the California-Nevada desert, in the fresh-faced post-war years of the expanding American empire, on ...

The Return of the Frog

Introduction by film historian Jonathan Rigby SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Despite being defeated by Inspector Elk (Harker) in The Frog (1937), the infamous und...

Champion

+ Q&A with Candice Carty-Williams, Déja J Bowens, Malcolm Kamulete, Ray BLK and John Ogunmuyiwa Champion is the first TV project from Candice Carty-Williams, author of the Sunday Times bestse...

Being Blacker

+ intro and Q&A with Molly Dineen and Blacker Dread. The event is hosted by Arike Oke, Executive Director of Knowledge and Collections at the BFI. Acclaimed documentary filmmaker and BAFTA awa...

Taxi Driver

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. New York in the 1970s as seen through the rabid eyes of disillusioned Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle (De Niro), working nights as a t...

Milou en mai

Set in the South in peacetime, teeming with characters, full of jokes and sly allusions, sunny and mischevious, a comedy not a tragedy, Milou en mai might seem to confirm Louis Malle’s sometime rep...

Elemental

+ Q&A with director Peter Sohn, producer Denise Ream and actors Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie It’s easy to imagine the wind having attitude or fire being angry. A happy bunch of flowers could ...

Mauvais sang

Reminiscent of Godard’s early genre movies, Leos Carax’s second feature combines a semi-parodic crime fable about rivals seeking to steal a vaccine for a new virus, a faltering romance between inno...

Pretty Red Dress

‘Don’t be a pussy boy,’ Travis (Natey Jones) tells himself as he admires the striking look of a decorative necklace against his throat. Travis has just been released from prison and is trying to se...

Lost in Translation

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In the opening sequence of Sofia Coppola’s off-beat romantic comedy Lost in Translation, Bill Murray’s Bob Harris, a washed-up movie...

I Am Weekender

+ Q&A with Chloé Raunet and WIZ, hosted by Miranda Sawyer. Intro music: Weekender (Requiem for Lost Friends Mix) by Tim Dorney. All those attending tonight’s screening are invited to a privat...

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Before even the credit titles can appear, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell arrive to a blast of music at screen centre from behind a black curtain, in matching orange-red outfits that sizzle the scr...

Of Time and the City

With intro by film critic and lecturer Dr Julia Wagner (Wednesday 14 June only) There is something mysterious about Terence Davies’ Liverpool from the outset: at the heart of this meditation on th...

His Girl Friday

Howard Hawks describes the origins of His Girl Friday in one of his favourite and most consistent anecdotes: ‘I was going to prove to somebody one night that The Front Page had the finest modern di...

Une chambre en ville

Jacques Demy’s new film, Une chambre en ville, is one of his oldest projects. In 1953-54, just out of film school, he began to write a novel set in his home town of Nantes, a tragic love story agai...

Cléo from 5 to 7

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. When was this immaculate feature film, Agnès Varda’s essay on time and space, love and death, ever not on our minds? Arriving with ...