Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Goryeojang

Bong Joon Ho on Kim Ki-young I discovered Kim’s films in the 1990s. In Korea it was only after military rule ended at the end of the 1980s that a proper film archive was established, and it became ...

December 2, 2024 | ECHOES IN TIME
KOREAN FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE AND NEW CINEMA

Little Women

Across disparate countries and radically different eras, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has come to life in a million different ways. It is a book that is unsparing in its depiction of the way th...

December 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Brutalist

The end titles of Brady Corbet’s new film The Brutalist unroll to the unlikely needle drop of ‘One for You, One for Me’ by Italian pop duo La Bionda. The 1978 disco hit smacks of deliberate and tri...

November 30, 2024 | PREVIEW

All We Imagine as Light

At the end of Jules Dassin’s 1948 noir The Naked City, a voiceover announces: ‘There are eight million stories in the naked city and this was one of them.’ Dassin, shooting under the influence of I...

November 29, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Ballymurphy Precedent

The screening on Tuesday 26 November will be introduced by director Callum Macrae ‘A landmark film. The sheer humanity makes the crimes committed and the justice denied unforgettable.’ – John Pil...

November 26, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Bird

Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey) focuses on life in working-class England, where 12-year-old Bailey seeks to escape from her tumultuous life through a friendship with a mysterious strang...

November 25, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

Hard Target

+ intro by Ti Singh, BFI FAN season producer (Wednesday 27 November only) John Woo’s first US film paired him with the ‘muscles from Brussels’, Belgian action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose fla...

November 24, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

The Coming War on China

With nuclear catastrophe, whether by accident or design, an ever-more chilling global threat, John Pilger’s 2016 film has renewed relevance and urgency. At a preview screening at BFI Southbank he i...

November 23, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the Ice Cold War + Flying the Flag – Arming the World

Inspired by Jill Chen Louis’s book The Cola Wars, John Pilger’s Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the Ice Cold War tells the story of the struggle between ‘those giants of carbonation and regurgitation, Coca-C...

November 23, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Black Box Diaries

+ Q&A with director Shiori Ito We are delighted to announce that following this event, director Shiori Ito will join us for a book signing located outside of the Blue Room. Copies of Shiori’s ...

November 22, 2024 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

District B13

+ intro by Chee Keong Cheung, writer, director, producer and CEO of Action Xtreme (Wednesday 20 November only) This dystopian actioner follows the same blueprint as the earlier Taxi: a cop and a c...

November 20, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

Year Zero - The Silent Death of Cambodia + Breaking the Silence - Truth and Lies in the War on Terror

John Pilger’s shocking 1979 documentary Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia alerted the world to the horrors wrought by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had come to power in the turmoil followi...

November 18, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Polite Society

+ Q&A with director Nida Manzoor 16-year-old Ria is an aspiring stuntwoman, dreaming of her future excelling in the film business while her older sister Lena becomes a world famous artist. But...

November 17, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

Bird

Andrea Arnold’s return to her British social-realist roots is warm, exuberant and absolutely soars. Twelve-year-old Bailey is a tomboy who lives in a busy squat in North Kent with Bug, her young fa...

November 15, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Lousy Little Sixpence + Utopia

+ pre-recorded intro by Dr Alec Morgan and statement from Amy McQuire Lousy Little Sixpence: why the film was made Open any volume of Australian history and try to find any reference to William Co...

November 10, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Face/Off

The original tagline of John Woo’s outlandish, high-octane masterpiece read, ‘In order to trap him, he must become him’. That doesn’t come close to capturing the full insanity of this film, which s...

November 9, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

Point Break

Production on Point Break began on 9 July 1990, some three years after the project was first developed. Of the long gestation period for the film, producers Robert L. Levy and Peter Abrams note, ‘W...

November 8, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

The Golden Dream

Ken Loach’s influence may not be so prevalent in current UK filmmaking, but turn to the Spanish-speaking world and he remains a key reference point for a number of directors forging tough, angry, s...

November 5, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

Red Cliff

‘An Asian Troy’ is how John Woo describes the Manichean power struggles that gripped China at the end of the Han Dynasty, as recounted in the 14th-century literary classic Romance of the Three King...

November 2, 2024 | ART OF ACTION
CELEBRATING THE REAL ACTION STARS OF CINEMA

Death of a Nation - The Timor Conspiracy + Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002)

John Pilger introduced his 1994 East Timor film at BFI Southbank as follows: At Stanfords in London’s Covent Garden, reputedly the best map shop in the world, I asked for a map of the island of Ti...

November 2, 2024 | HIDDEN TRUTHS
JOHN PILGER AND THE POWER OF DOCUMENTARY

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