BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Correction Please;
or, How We Got into Pictures

+ intro by film historian, Ian Christie In these two films by Noël Burch, the processes of image making are interrogated and playfully subverted through a range of inventive and elusive narrative ...

April 3, 2023 | ART IN THE MAKING

Nashville

One afternoon in the mid-1970s, I bunked off studies to catch the first screening at the local arts cinema of an American movie set in the capital of country music. After nearly three hours in the ...

April 2, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Le Départ

The young Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski is probably the most explosive and original filmmaker in Eastern Europe. Recently he visited Denmark, where he wants to shoot his next film, and where I ...

April 2, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Deep End

I never realised that the organised world of cinema thought it had lost Deep End – you have to be grateful for small mercies, because I’d have been even more upset if I’d heard that rumour when it ...

April 2, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Of Time and the City

There is something mysterious about Terence Davies’ Liverpool from the outset: at the heart of this meditation on the city lies a tension, between urban change as a process that is brutal and unrem...

April 1, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Last Year in Marienbad

‘I am now quite prepared to claim that Marienbad is the greatest film ever made, and to pity those who cannot see it.’ So wrote Jacques Brunius in Sight and Sound in 1962, regarding ‘the film I had...

April 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

La Grande Illusion

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Chronicling the fortunes of a group of French prisoners of war incarcerated in Germany during the First World War, Renoir’s film is ...

April 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Godfather Part II

Whichever way you look at it, The Godfather trilogy – thanks to its first two superlative instalments – undoubtedly ranks as one of the most highly respected achievements in filmmaking of the last ...

April 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

EO

Please note that this film contains a sequence of flashing lights which might affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy. Receiving its British premiere at the 2022 BFI London...

April 1, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Barrier

The screening on Tuesday 4 April will be introduced by season curator Michael Brooke Barrier has a jester’s freedom, the confidence of a man who knows his world deeply, who has measured the possib...

April 1, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

No Trams to Lime Street + The Hard Knock

One of the more original talents to emerge from the new wave of British playwrights in the late 1950s, Alun Owen (b. Menai Bridge, Anglesey, Wales, 1925. d. London, 1994) gave British television dr...

March 31, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Never Let Me Go

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘It quietly stays with you, as it’s so intensely thought-provoking. And it’s beautifully shot too.’ – Alex M, BFI Member Mark Roman...

March 31, 2023 | MEMBER EXCLUSIVES

Hands Up!

Skolimowski’s alter ego Andrzej Leszczyc returns for a final bow as one of five thirtysomething former colleagues whose reunion, taking place in an abandoned railway wagon, becomes a sombre reflect...

March 31, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

God's Creatures

This gripping and atmospheric Irish psychological drama asks how far you might go to protect someone you love, even if they were accused of something unforgiveable. In a windswept fishing town on t...

March 31, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Rio Bravo

Hawks’ acclaimed chamber western is at once defiantly idiosyncratic (complete with wordless prologue and musical interlude), leisurely in pace, and engrossing throughout, peppered with suspenseful ...

March 30, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Northern Soul

A labour of love for writer-director Elaine Constantine, Northern Soul’s initially modest distribution was expanded significantly following critical acclaim and a passion-driven social media campai...

March 30, 2023 | NORTHERN VOICES

Backwards and in High Heels

Join us for this season introduction event, celebrating the wit, the sass and, of course, the dance routines of the great Ginger Rogers. In this panel discussion, speakers Lucy Bolton, Pamela Hutch...

March 30, 2023 | GINGER ROGERS
ALL THAT SASS

Walkover

+ Q&A with Jerzy Skolimowski (Wednesday 29 March only). The Q&A will be moderated by Mehelli Modi, founder of Second Run, a specialist Blu-ray and DVD label releasing important classic and ...

March 29, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

To Sleep with Anger

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Charles Burnett’s intriguing mix of melodrama and allegorical fable has a seemingly happy middle-class African-American family livi...

March 29, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Moonlighting

The screening on Wednesday 29 March will be introduced by Jerzy Skolimowski The astonishing thing about Moonlighting, given the battery-farming methods invoked to ensure topicality, is the intric...

March 29, 2023 | OUTSIDERS AND EXILES
THE FILMS OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

Correction Please;or, How We Got into Pictures

Nashville

Le Départ

Deep End

Of Time and the City

Last Year in Marienbad

La Grande Illusion

The Godfather Part II

EO

Barrier

No Trams to Lime Street + The Hard Knock

Never Let Me Go

Hands Up!

God's Creatures

Rio Bravo

Northern Soul

Backwards and in High Heels

Walkover

To Sleep with Anger

Moonlighting

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Correction Please;
or, How We Got into Pictures