Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Jerzy Skolimowski in Conversation

This event is hosted by the Outsiders and Exiles – the films of Jerzy Skolimowski season curator Michael Brooke. Michael is a freelance writer and multimedia producer specialising in British and c...

March 28, 2023 | EVENTS

The Age of Innocence

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Martin Scorsese on ‘The Age of Innocence’ Set in New York in the 1870s, The Age of Innocence tells the story of Newland Archer, who ...

March 28, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

Touch of Evil

The last great Film Noir and the final film Orson Welles would direct in Hollywood, Touch of Evil is a sweat-drenched saga of corruption and intrigue on the US/Mexico border. Beginning with one of...

March 27, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Rye Lane

Rye Lane is a modern-day romantic comedy based in South London about two young people falling in love while finding themselves in the process. Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas’ (Vivian Oparah) story be...

March 27, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Dance Craze

Please note that this film contains a sequence of flashing lights which might affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy. In 1979 Jerry Dammers founded not only The Specials b...

March 27, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

Cannon Arm and
the Arcade Quest
(Relaxed Screening)

+ intro and discussion The perfect film for the run up to London Games Week, this affectionate documentary offers a sublime portrait of a group of outsiders who support Kim Cannon Arm, a man of ...

March 27, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

1976

Winning the Sutherland Award for a debut feature at LFF2022, Manuela Martelli’s 1976 is an unnervingly brilliant portrait of the ways in which the Pinochet dictatorship realised its brute force and...

March 27, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Rye Lane

+ Q&A with director Raine Allen-Miller and actor Vivian Oparah Rye Lane is a modern-day romantic comedy based in South London about two young people falling in love while finding themselves i...

March 13, 2023 | PREVIEW

The Godfather

If you want a film that exemplifies and honours the impossible, arbitrary and contradictory history and nature of moviemaking, look no further. Hollywood movies are an artform and a mass entertainm...

March 10, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
12=

Close-up

From the mid-1990s until his death in 2016, Abbas Kiarostami was widely regarded as one of the most original, innovative and important filmmakers around, an audacious, idiosyncratic artist with a p...

March 10, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
17=

Winners

+ Q&A with director Hassan Nazer and producer Nadira Murray Director’s Statement Winners is a story of a nine-year-old boy’s passion for cinema and the reawakening of an old actor’s love for t...

March 9, 2023 | PREVIEW

Bruce Lacey, The Alberts and more

Introduced by William Fowler, BFI Archive Curator It’s easy, when thinking about Bruce Lacey’s life, art and films, to draw attention to his collaborators and famous friends, as if he were a Zelig...

March 9, 2023 | IVOR CUTLER AND THE ECCENTRIC MISCELLANY

The Teckman Mystery + The Stranger Left No Card

Wendy Toye originally trained as a ballet dancer before turning to acting and then directing, both on the stage and screen. She inspired a generation of female filmmakers to pursue a career in a ma...

March 8, 2023 | SENIORS
CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

WOW Festival presents
Prima Facie

This screening is made possible with the kind support of Empire Street Productions and National Theatre Live. A donation from each ticket sold will go to support The WOW Foundation’s work. The WOW...

March 8, 2023 | PREVIEWS AND EVENTS

Beau travail

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The first time I watched Beau travail, on DVD, in my childhood bedroom, in the spring of 2014, I didn’t know how it would end. My fa...

March 8, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
7=

The Night of the Hunter

In my film-watching experience, The Night of the Hunter is the closest a director has come to capturing the hypnotic, compelling potency of the kind of nightmares we have when we are children. Init...

March 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
25=

Mulholland Dr.

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. For all its mood shifts from black wit to sheer terror (Peter Deming’s camerawork creeps around corners and into darkened rooms to d...

March 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
8=

Vertigo

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Though admiring Vertigo’s pictorial splendour, I found Kim Novak gauche, the plot baloney and the whole enterprise lacking the maste...

March 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
2

Late Spring

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A widowed professor lives harmoniously with his grown-up daughter until a meddling aunt intervenes and suggests that it is time for...

March 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
21=

In the Mood for Love

The signs were already there that Wong Kar Wai’s woozy, hungry, love story was likely to earn a significant promotion in this year’s poll. Ten years ago, it stood out as the best-performing film of...

March 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
5=

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