BFI Southbank Programme Notes

News from Home

Regardless of how often I’ve revisited Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, I continually find new details to admire. The experience is much like strolling around a favourite neighbourhood and being p...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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8½

Back in the 1960s heyday of the pre-video art-house sector, two filmmakers stood as defining poles of the foreign-language art movie – Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Their qualities complemen...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Battle of Algiers

There are few classic films with as much relevance to the early 21st century as Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 re-enactment of the Algerian liberation struggle of the preceding decade. The Battle of Algie...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Psycho

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A contemporary review What keeps the public happy is undoubtedly their obsession with narrative craftsmanship. Your average critic,...

February 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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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...

February 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

+ intro with director Pierre Földes Based on a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami, this animated feature film follows the lives of multiple characters as they navigate post-tsunami exi...

February 6, 2023 | PREVIEW

Stalker

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Stalker was freely adapted from the 1971 novel Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a dark satire which had ...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Rear Window

Refocusing the Spectator: a comparison of the critical response to ‘Rear Window’ in 1954 and on its re-release in 1983 When Rear Window was first released in 1954, Hitchcock’s authorial mark was ...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Kurosawa and Shakespeare
Adaptation and Reinvention
An illustrated talk
by Adrian Wootton

In this lavishly illustrated talk with clips and slides Adrian Wootton (CEO of Film London and film curator) will explore Kurosawa’s remarkable trilogy of films, Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well...

February 5, 2023 | KUROSAWA

L'Atalante

No one achieved more in less time than Jean Vigo – how would the history of cinema be different if he had lived past 29? L’Atalante remains raw, strange, radical and singular. You don’t watch it so...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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North by Northwest

‘Brilliant performances by Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau, stunning set pieces, a riveting mistaken identity tale and a beautiful soundtrack – this is an absolute classi...

February 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Living

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. This post-war drama, recently adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro as Living, remains one of Kurosawa’s best loved films. Kanji Watanabe has sp...

February 4, 2023 | KUROSAWA

The Gathering Storm
Kurosawa Study Day

Join us for a day of talks and discussions exploring the less familiar aspects of Kurosawa’s work while also celebrating his cinematic legacy. A selection of expert speakers will explore various to...

February 4, 2023 | KUROSAWA

GoodFellas

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Scorsese’s return to the milieu of Mean Streets invites comparison less with that film than with Coppola’s Th...

February 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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La dolce vita

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In an age when few arthouse films cause riots or give rise to parliamentary debates, it’s difficult to envisage the sheer seismic fo...

February 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Battleship Potemkin

Every phenomenon has a chance, superficial manifestation. And underlying it is a profound feeling that reason has dictated it. So it was too with the film Battleship Potemkin. A grand epic, ‘1905’,...

February 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Sanshiro Sugata

+ intro by Ian Haydn Smith, season co-curator (Friday 3 February only) Kurosawa’s accomplished debut is inspired by the life of 19th-century judo pioneer, Saigo Shiro. The wilful Sanshiro travels ...

February 3, 2023 | KUROSAWA

So-Called Australia - Blak Art on Film + TERROR NULLIUS

Canvassing memory, inheritance and invasion, this programme of shorts is a melodic tribute to Indigenous strength and the poetic subversion of colonial amnesia. The artists address issues of state-...

February 3, 2023 | YOU BEAUTIES - NEW AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

Blade Runner - The Final Cut

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Philip K. Dick died three months before the US release of Blade Runner, the film based on his 1968 science-fiction novel Do Androids...

February 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Sunshine

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It’s 2057. The sun is dying and the Earth is in a precipitous state, with all life threatened as the planet turns into a frozen wast...

February 2, 2023 | MEMBER EXCLUSIVE