Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Peter Greenaway Shorts Programme 1

Greenaway’s innovative shorts provide essential insight into his obsessions and immense talent. A Walk Through H introduces us to the character of Tulse Luper, who we meet again in The Tulse Luper ...

Walter Rodney - 'What They Don't Want You to Know'

We are really pleased to announce that joining the discussion will be Dr Patricia Rodney (CEO of The Walter Rodney Foundation, academic and author), Gina Nadira Miller (activist politician and bus...

Drowning by Numbers

A contemporary review Peter Greenaway has become his own foremost exegete, although it is not yet clear whether this career move springs from a frustration that most English critics have little tas...

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

+ intro by Lead Programmer Justin Johnson and Film Editor John Wilson ACE (Sunday 23 October only) Eating is a constant theme in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. More oddly, as Donald Spoto observed...

Fruitvale Station

Ryan Coogler’s debut Fruitvale Station is a perceptive docudrama that reconstructs the final day in the life of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black resident of Oakland, California. In the early hours ...

The Falls

A record of a cataclysm that never was, The Falls is the epic, lengthy but highly-rewarding culmination of Greenaway’s experiments through the 1970s, channelling sci-fi, mockumentary and the writin...

Creed

Coogler revitalised the Rocky franchise with his second collaboration with lead actor Michael B Jordan. It’s nothing short of exhilarating, with fluid and immersive fight scenes, as well as a surpr...

The Saddest Music in the World

The Saddest Music in the World is set in Winnipeg during the Great Depression of 1933. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a once successful Broadway impresario now on the skids, arrives back in his home...

Prick Up Your Ears

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With an Alan Bennett script based on John Lahr’s biography of Joe Orton, Stephen Frears’ film about the shifts in power in the playw...

Emily

In her directorial debut from her own original screenplay, Frances O’Connor paints a stunningly beautiful and playful portrait exploring the life and relationships that inspired Wuthering Heights. ...

Nil by Mouth

An uncompromisingly frank portrait of a particular sector of working-class family life in south-east London (where Gary Oldman grew up), Nil by Mouth is a powerful, astute, authentically foul-mouth...

Gary Oldman in Conversation

Since making his film debut in the early 1980s, Gary Oldman has established himself as one of the most successful movie stars of the modern era. Renowned for the range, power and subtlety of his pe...

Peter Greenaway
Frames of Mind Season Introduction

Join us for a panel discussion exploring our Peter Greenaway season and his career as director, film philosopher and visual artist. Chaired by season programmer Justin Johnson, this season introduc...

Bram Stoker's Dracula

+ intro by award-winning writer and broadcaster Christopher Frayling, in celebration of his upcoming book Vampire Cinema (Wednesday 19 October only) Coppola’s version of Stoker’s novel – determine...

The Belly of an Architect

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Experienced viewers of Peter Greenaway’s films, even if they are relatively familiar with architectural histor...

A Zed & Two Noughts

Twin zoologists, grieving the death of their wives in a collision involving a car and a swan, gradually form a bond with the woman who was driving the vehicle that caused their spouses’ demise. The...

The Others

Who’d have thought that things could still go bump in the night and render 21st-century sophisticates witless with terror? Who’d have believed that the uncanny in its most moth-eaten Miss Havisham ...

My Winnipeg

UK distribution for the films of the avant-garde Canadian director Guy Maddin has been erratic, with only The Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Dracula Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) and The ...

Meantime

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Leigh’s TV film about an East End family faced with unemployment and recession in Thatcher’s Britain, Oldman plays Coxy, volatile...

Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave begins with the detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountaintop. When he meets the deceased man’s wife Seo-rae, he starts to suspect her at the sam...