Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Young Soul Rebels

Isaac Julien on ‘Young Soul Rebels’ I suppose Young Soul Rebels is a film which tries to deal with a number of questions that people would rather sweep under the carpet at this moment, especially ...

The Passion of Remembrance

The men disaffected by the turbulence of the 1980s place themselves at the forefront of black liberation, embodying their authoritative traditional gender roles to dictate a vision for the future. ...

Theorem

+ intro and talk with Bruce LaBruce, a/political exhibition and Doesn’t Exist magazine launch Bruce LaBruce has reimagined Pasolini’s Theorem for his latest project, a photoshoot and exhibition fo...

Experimenta Mixtape S02E02 Curated by Holly Antrum

Drawing on extensive, sustained research carried out at the BFI National Archive, artist Holly Antrum presents a wide-ranging, unpredictable mix of film and videos, as if selected by the fictional ...

Deep End
(Relaxed Screening)

+ intro and discussion Set in London – but mostly filmed in West Germany – at the end of the 1960s, Deep End explores the space between fantasy and reality, as teenage swimming pool attendant Mi...

Storm Warning

When Marsha Mitchell (Rogers, in one of her strongest roles) visits her sister (Doris Day) in the Deep South, she witnesses a Ku Klux Klan murder involving her brother-in-law. This frighteningly te...

Essential Killing

Appropriately coming from a filmmaker who has endured his own share of troubles, Essential Killing deals with survival against the odds. Premiered to acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, Jerzy Skol...

Lunana
A Yak in the Classroom

What’s it about? Trainee teacher Ugyen is disappointed to learn that in the final year of his learning will be spent in Lunana, a remote village in northern Bhutan. It’s a staggering seven-day walk...

Sick of Myself

A very funny unromantic comedy about a delightfully unhinged couple in a toxic relationship. Twentysomething Signe is coasting, spending her days working in a café and scrolling through social medi...

Polite Society

+ intro with writer-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...

Full Circle
The Haunting of Julia

+ Q&A with Richard Loncraine and Simon Fitzjohn When the cameras finally started rolling on the production of Full Circle in London on 8 November 1976, it is unlikely that producer Peter Fett...

Alan Bennett in conversation

Few writers have successfully mined northern culture and specific northern speech patterns as Alan Bennett. Growing up in Leeds, he listened in on the chatter of his relatives, absorbing the patter...

Rita, Sue and Bob Too

‘The film that turned the festival blue’ was one shocked tabloid’s verdict on Alan Clarke’s bleakly bawdy comedy about a married man bedding his teen babysitters, which scandalised the Brighton Fil...

The Man without Desire

+ intro by Josephine Botting, BFI Curator and author of Adrian Brunel and British Cinema of the 1920s , published by Edinburgh University Press. One of the stranger films to emerge from Britain in...

11 Minutes

Skolimowski’s formidable conceptual and technical skills get their most intensive workout here, as initially unconnected stories (an attempted seduction, a crime, a chase, a painting in progress) g...

Play for Today - Comedians

‘Comedy is medicine. Not sugared sweeties to rot yer teeth.’ In the early Seventies, a regular Saturday night ratings winner was Granada’s cheap and cheerful half-hour show The Comedians. Sporting...

Raging Bull

Sitting in a movie theatre as the credits rolled on The Death Collector (1975), Raging Bull’s casting director Cis Corman felt they could have found their Joey LaMotta. The film hadn’t made much of...

One Fine Morning

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. The light-touch naturalism of Mia Hansen-Løve films is always rooted in autobiography. One Fine Morning stems from her experience o...

Take This Waltz

28-year-old Margot is happily married to Lou, a good-natured cookbook author. But when Margot encounters their handsome neighbour Daniel, the mutual attraction between the two is undeniable. Writte...

Lady in the Dark

Paramount production notes for ‘Lady in the Dark’ As a play, Lady in the Dark opened on Broadway on 23 January 1941. It comes to the screen as one of the most lavish and spectacular productions in...