BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Silent Duel

An idealistic young doctor is unwittingly infected with a patient’s syphilitic blood. Although determined to continue his vocation, his medical condition has a profound effect on his relationship w...

February 2, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Moonlight

You stand, wrapped in that strange communal spell during the thunderous ovation, as the memory of cinema floods back. Not the explosive, momentarily gratifying, empty-bellied franchise juggernaut t...

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

Some years ago – we’re talking about the mid-80s to the mid-90s – serial killer movies were, for want of a better phrase, all the rage. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), Manhunter (1986), ...

February 2, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Drunken Angel

Kurosawa on ‘Drunken Angel’ In this picture I finally discovered myself. It was my picture: I was doing it and no one else. Part of this was thanks to Mifune. Shimura played the doctor beautifully,...

February 2, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Stray Dog

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Stray Dog a young police detective, Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), has his gun stolen by a pickpocket. Humiliated by the loss and tak...

February 1, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Sans soleil

‘By the way, did you know that there are emus in the Ile de France?’ This is surely not the most pertinent question in Chris Marker’s monumental Sans soleil – a time-and-space-hopping travelogue th...

February 1, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Le Mépris

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘Death,’ says Fritz Lang in Le Mépris, ‘is not a conclusion.’ Not, at least, in the way it was for Michel Poiccard or Nana, for Ulys...

February 1, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Enys Men

A cross between folk horror and nature documentary, Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men is as idiosyncratic as his acclaimed first feature, Bait. Told through poetic visuals, it is similarly shot on grainy 16mm...

February 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Daughters of the Dust

The ascension of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust to recognition as one of the greatest films of all time hardly comes as a surprise to Black women moviegoers, who championed the film from its ea...

February 1, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Breathless

‘We barged into cinema like cavemen into the Versailles of Louis the Fifteenth.’ (Jean-Luc Godard) Godard’s first feature is as fresh as ever after [in 1988] nearly thirty years. If Truffaut’s deb...

February 1, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Hidden Fortress (Relaxed Screening)

+ intro and discussion. See the film that George Lucas drew inspiration from for the original trilogy in the Star Wars saga, in the first of two relaxed screenings in our Kurosawa season. At a t...

January 30, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

Berberian Sound Studio

The screening on Sunday 29 January will be introduced by Mark Jenkin and Peter Strickland. This is a great example of an untrustworthy film – a feeling that you’re in unsafe hands and not everyth...

January 29, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Requiem for a Village

It may be nearly half a century old, but this melancholic portrait of loss seems more relevant than ever. I was intrigued by this film when I heard about the dead rising from their graves sequence,...

January 27, 2023 | MARK JENKIN’S THE CINEMATIC DNA OF ENYS MEN

Guillermo del Toro in Conversation - Animation for All

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and has gone on to receive huge critical acclaim and awards attention. We are delighted to welcome Guillermo de...

January 27, 2023 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Sanjuro

Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro ends with what must surely be the briefest, and most breathtaking, duel in all cinema. Two samurai swordsmen face up to each other, motionless, gazing into each other’s eye...

January 26, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Nolly

+ Q&A with writer Russell T Davies, cast Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Gatiss and Augustus Prew, exec producer Nicola Shindler and director Peter Hoar. Chaired by Boyd Hilton. Academy Award-nomin...

January 26, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Andrei Rublev

Among filmmakers, one of the paradigmatic cases of indomitable entrepreneurial spirit was Andrei Tarkovsky. For each of his films he had conflicts with the Soviet State Committee for Cinematography...

January 26, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Bad Sleep Well

Introduced by season co-curator Ian Haydn Smith (Sunday 29 January only). SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Tangentially a version of Hamlet, Kurosawa’s rebuttal to...

January 22, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Tár

Lydia Tár (Blanchett) is widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors. An EGOT winner who guest teaches at Juilliard; she is also the first female chief conductor of the Berlin ...

January 20, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Sansho the Bailiff

Never do the years pass so sadly on screen as they do in Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho Dayu. In this period tragedy set in 11th-century Japan, the reunion of a kidnapped brother and sister with their he...

January 20, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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