BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Perfect Days

The 21st-century fiction filmmaking career of Wim Wenders has been exasperating for fans of the early work of wonderment and charm that made him a pillar of the New German cinema in the 1970s and 8...

March 1, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Evil Does Not Exist

The love for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, which won an Academy Award for Best International Feature in 2022, can feel like a dream. Needless to say, Hamaguchi’s refraction of Chekhov endures, ...

March 1, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Devil in a Blue Dress

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Carl Franklin’s elegant, intelligent adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel centres on Second World War veteran Easy Rawlins, hired to ...

March 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Blue Black Permanent

+ intro by BFI events programmer Aga Baranowska and filmmaker and curator Peter Todd Blue Black Permanent was Margaret Tait’s first and only feature production. Although her abstract animations an...

March 1, 2024 | REGULAR PROGRAMME

Ben Nicholson 1894-1982

+ intro by Steve Foxon, Curator of Non-Fiction, BFI National Archive An account of the life and work of the English painter Ben Nicholson, with reminiscences from the artist Patrick Heron, who too...

February 28, 2024 | ART IN THE MAKING

The Dreamers

+ Q&A with producer Jeremy Thomas Gilbert Adair on ‘The Dreamers’ The novel on which my screenplay for The Dreamers is based was originally published in 1988 under the title The Holy Innocents...

February 27, 2024 | UK PREMIERE OF 4K RESTORATION

Oska Bright Film Festival 2024 First Look

The Cunning The Oska Bright team is delighted to share this selection of highlights ahead of the festival. The festival will explore aspects of the human condition past and present, encompassing...

February 26, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

Caesar Must Die

A contemporary review The Taviani brothers, arthouse darlings of the 70s and 80s (Allonsanfàn, Padre padrone, The Night of San Lorenzo), have rather dropped off the international map in recent year...

February 24, 2024 | MAGICAL REALISM
THE FILM FABLES OF THE TAVIANI BROTHERS

Boom

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Set on a secluded island, Boom introduced a new, minimal ‘music box’ sound that Barry frequently used in the years immediately befor...

February 24, 2024 | JOHN BARRY
SOUNDTRACKING BOND AND BEYOND

City of God

In 2002, the Cannes Film Festival was crackling with buzz, about a film that wasn’t in the official competition, was a completely unknown entity, yet was building up a frenzied word of mouth. It wo...

February 23, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Watermark

+ Q&A with filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky; hosted by Dr Eugénie Shinkle Director’s Notes: Jennifer Baichwal Water has a unique capacity to express scal...

February 17, 2024 | THE ANTHROPOCENE TRILOGY

Manufactured Landscapes

+ intro by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Edward Burtynsky. Hosted by Maggi Hurt. Edward Burtynsky: I had to cross some unknown territory through Pennsylvania, which happened to be one o...

February 16, 2024 | THE ANTHROPOCENE TRILOGY

ANTHROPOCENE - The Human Epoch

+ panel discussion with Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. Hosted by Farah Ahmed, Climate Justice Lead at Julie’s Bicycle Director’s Notes It feels like our films keep ...

February 16, 2024 | THE ANTHROPOCENE TRILOGY

Christopher Nolan in Conversation

From Memento to Batman Begins, Inception to Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan is a rare director who marries his epic vision with an intelligent, unique approach to filmmaking and storytelling. His films ...

February 15, 2024 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

The Taste of Things

Who would be a chef? From Boiling Point (2021) to The Bear (2022-), film and TV in the 2020s show the culinary arts to be a vicious, brutal vocation; one that tears apart families, destroys friends...

February 14, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Showing Up

From the rising tensions of a make-or-break week of a Portland artist getting ready for a big show, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt carves a profound, gorgeously layered portrait of a woman that is as mu...

February 11, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Padre Padrone

Padre Padrone, a Sardinian-set true story about a young shepherd’s rebellion against his tyrannical father and the seventh feature from brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, is based on an autobiogr...

February 11, 2024 | MAGICAL REALISM
THE FILM FABLES OF THE TAVIANI BROTHERS

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

One of the earliest gags thrown out (and apparently away) by the Brothers Coen is their po-faced title-credit claim that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is based on the Odyssey. Aha, you think, typical ...

February 11, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Honor among Lovers

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Here, Dorothy Arzner’s instinct for story, casting and visuals are employed at the service of some of the era’s finest actors. Her ...

February 11, 2024 | A LEAGUE OF HER OWN
THE CINEMA OF DOROTHY ARZNER

Orphée

Cocteau took the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (familiar from Virgil and Ovid) and updated it to a fantastical version of post-war Paris, where the poet, played by Cocteau’s muse and lover Marais, b...

February 10, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS