BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Don't Look Now

Nicolas Roeg on ‘Don’t Look Now’ To what extent was Don’t Look Now your own choice? A publicity handout says it was Peter Katz, the producer, who thought Daphne du Maurier’s story would make a good...

September 10, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Carnival

+ intro by Josephine Botting, Curator, BFI National Archive To mark 25 years since the death of British screen superstar Dorothy ‘Chili’ Bouchier, we present a rare outing of this archive print wi...

September 10, 2024 | PROJECTING THE ARCHIVE

Robin Redbreast

After being dumped by her partner, Norah moves to the countryside and falls for a local gamekeeper, with dire consequences. This is a perfect case study of the city-slicker moving to the country an...

September 9, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Nightsleeper

+ Q&A with actors Alexandra Roach and Joe Cole, writer Nick Leather and executive producer Kate Harwood Nightsleeper is a real-time thriller for BBC iPlayer and BBC One. Created by BAFTA-winni...

September 9, 2024 | TV PREVIEW

Irma Vep

Shot in four weeks on a minuscule budget and written by director Olivier Assayas for the Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep explodes like a firework over its thematic terrain: a mourning...

September 9, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

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 ...

September 8, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Green for Danger

Eight years after The Gaunt Stranger, Sidney Gilliat once more did battle with a whodunit in this terse, wry thriller taken from a novel by Christianna Brand. Brand’s Inspector Cockrill investigate...

September 8, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Song of the Exile

In her semi-autobiographical film, Ann Hui casts Cheung as Hueyin, an aspiring journalist living in London who is called back to Hong Kong to attend her sister’s wedding. Reunited with her family, ...

September 7, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

Anomalisa

As motivational writer and speaker Michael Stone spends time in his hotel room while on tour, he dwells on the emotional distance he feels towards everyone. He befriends a woman named Lisa at the h...

September 7, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

The Island
with live accompaniment by
the Balanescu Ensemble

+ Q&A with director Anca Damian and composer Alexander Balanescu A subversive take on Robinson Crusoe, Anca Damian’s film introduces us to an exile on an island who finds common ground with a ...

September 6, 2024 | SONIC

Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger’s delirious melodrama is one of the most erotic films ever to emerge from British cinema, let alone in the repressed 1940s – it was released just two years after David Lean’s...

September 6, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

In Camera

This bold and delightfully unpredictable portrait from Naqqash Khalid both highlights and critiques the challenges of navigating the UK film industry as a British Asian actor. Aden, a struggling ac...

September 5, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Do the Right Thing

During the hottest day of the year, Mookie (Lee) travels around his predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood making deliveries for the local pizzeria run by Italian American Sal (Aiello). As the ...

September 5, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Rear Window

Refocusing the Spectator: a comparison of the critical response to ‘Rear Window’ in 1954 and on its re-release in 1983 When Rear Window was first released in 1954, Hitchcock’s authorial mark was s...

September 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Little Otík

+ intro by musician and Starve Acre composer Matthew Herbert (Wednesday 4 September only) Jan Svankmajer on ‘Little Otík’ Little Otík is based on a folk tale best known from the version by K.J. Er...

September 4, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Alice

Although a declared admirer of Lewis Carroll as the inadvertent pioneer of surrealism, Jan Svankmajer firmly tells the Alice story his own way, much as one would expect. Like an extended reconstruc...

September 4, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

A Fishy Story

Cheung stars as an aspiring actress who befriends her neighbour, a struggling unlicensed cab driver. Set against the backdrop of the 1967 riots, it is a turbulent yet playful and romantic Breakfast...

September 3, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

The screening on Wednesday 2 October will be introduced by film and talks programmer and writer Nadia M. Oliva. With a plot of pure Shakespearean farce, witty dialogue and lyrics by Demy, and a ma...

September 3, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Rebel

Ray Galton and Alan Simpson on Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ When did you first meet Tony Hancock? We first met Tony Hancock in the stalls of the Paris Cinema, Lower Regent Street, in October 1951, during...

September 2, 2024 | SENIORS

The Piano

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. For a while I could not think, let alone write, about The Piano without shaking. Precipitating a flood of feelings, The Piano deman...

September 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS