BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Sunrise
A Song of Two Humans

When F.W. Murnau left Germany for America in 1926, did cinema foresee what was coming? Did it sense that change was around the corner – that now was the time to fill up on fantasy, delirium and spe...

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

Shoah – the title is the Hebrew word for ‘Annihilation’ – took ten years to complete. It runs in two parts for some nine and a half hours. Its subject is the minutiae of the Holocaust, what occurre...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Passion of Joan of Arc

The Passion of Joan of Arc is an extraordinary achievement. Based on the original 1431 transcript of the trial of the teenager, Dreyer’s sparse style, filmed with little emphasis on plot or setting...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Nothing About Us
Without Us

A disabled-led discourse on accessible advancements within the film industry. ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ will be a celebration of the BFI’s Disability Screen Advisory Group’s first cohort of le...

March 5, 2023 | BUSTING THE BIAS

I Didn't See You There

+ pre-recorded Q&A A ground-breaking documentary shot entirely from filmmaker Reid Davenport’s physical perspective, both from his wheelchair and his two feet. Reid Davenport’s documentary ex...

March 5, 2023 | BUSTING THE BIAS

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Inspired by Andreas Malm’s book, director Daniel Goldhaber (Cam) spins a tense thriller that is part heist movie wrapped up in an exploration of the current climate crisis that the world is facing....

March 5, 2023 | GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW

Cléo from 5 to 7

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Sixty years after it was first released, Cléo from 5 to 7 has finally leapt into the top 20: a slow pace for a film so light on its ...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Citizen Kane

Andrew Sarris on the 50th anniversary of the opening of ‘Citizen Kane’ Citizen Kane erupted on to the screen, at least as a long-lived figure of speech, on 1 May 1941 at New York’s Palace Theater. ...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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2001 A Space Odyssey

Kubrick’s epic contemplation of the nature and origins of humanity, completed a full year before the first moon landing, remains one of cinema’s greatest technical feats and a highpoint in the film...

March 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Tokyo Story

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Ozu’s gently melancholy but hugely moving masterpiece has an elderly country couple visit their grown-up children in post-war Tokyo;...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Shy Radicals

With intro and discussion A portrait of artist and activist Hamja Ahsan, commander-in-chief of the introvert resistance. Shy Radicals is a portrait of award-winning artist, activist and author Ha...

March 4, 2023 | BUSTING THE BIAS

Seven Samurai

When Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai premiered in Japan on 26 April 1954, it was the most expensive domestic production ever, costing 125 million Yen (approximately $350,000), almost five times the ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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The Searchers

Cinema’s poet of the Wild West, John Ford already had countless westerns (among over 100 films) under his belt before reteaming with regular star John Wayne for this disturbing story of racism, obs...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Playtime

Monsieur Hulot finds himself lost in a futuristic Paris when he stumbles upon a great exhibition showcasing the latest in designs and gadgets. His encounters with an American tourist group and, in ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Man with a Movie Camera

‘Down with bourgeois fairytale plots and scenarios – long live life as it is!’ So said Dziga Vertov, for whom documentary was the only true revolutionary form as it freed film from false scenarios ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Ivor Cutler and Friends

‘Anyone can be seen to be eccentric if you take him out of his milieu and put him into someone else’s.’ – Ivor Cutler, 1974 Ivor Cutler, the poet, singer, musician, teacher, painter, illustrator, ...

March 4, 2023 | IVOR CUTLER AND THE ECCENTRIC MISCELLANY

Doctor Who - The Sea Devils

+ Q&A with Katy Manning and Hugh Futcher Making ‘The Sea Devils’ The popularity of the eponymous subterranean menaces from series seven’s Doctor Who and the Silurians hadn’t gone unnoticed by ...

March 4, 2023 | EVENTS

Apocalypse Now
Final Cut

In the year of its 40th anniversary, Francis Ford Coppola’s acid-drenched odyssey to the dark heart of the Vietnam war is returning to the big screen, in what has been billed Apocalypse Now: Final ...

March 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Singin' in the Rain

It would be hard to find a more enjoyable, durable musical than this homage to Hollywood’s bumpy transition from silent to talking pictures. Gene Kelly is at his charismatic best, especially during...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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La Règle du jeu

‘For us there was only one French director, and that was Jean Renoir’, said Claude Chabrol, while François Truffaut called Renoir ‘the greatest filmmaker in the world’. New Wave directors, as criti...

March 3, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Sunrise A Song of Two Humans