BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Madadayo

Just as the camera had panned down in the opening moments of Sanshiro Sugata [Akira Kurosawa’s first film], so it pans back up at the conclusion of Madadayo as a small boy raises his head to a swir...

February 20, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Yojimbo

Introduced by Asif Kapadia, season co-curator (Thursday 23 February only) Kurosawa on ‘Yojimbo’ For a long time I had wanted to make a really interesting film – and it finally turned into this pic...

February 18, 2023 | KUROSAWA

You Won't Be Alone

When writer and director Goran Stolevski took home the 2018 Sundance Festival prize for his short film Would You Look at Her, it immediately attracted the attention of producers Kristina Ceyton and...

February 17, 2023 | YOU BEAUTIES - NEW AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

Subject

+ Q&A with directors Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera, and contributor Margaret Ratliff, hosted by Kim Longinotto The advent of streaming has seemingly ushered in a golden era for documentar...

February 17, 2023 | PREVIEW

Friends and Strangers

James Vaughan’s remarkable debut feature is on its surface an indie mumblecore-influenced comedy about intertwined young lives, set between Sydney and Brisbane. But its simplicity is deceptive, and...

February 16, 2023 | YOU BEAUTIES - NEW AUSTRALIAN CINEMA

Dersu Uzala

Introduced by Ian Haydn Smith, season co-curator (Thursday 16 February) and by Doug Weir, BFI Technical Delivery Manager (Monday 27 February) From Rashomon (1950) to Yojimbo (1961), Akira Kurosawa...

February 16, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Summer of Sam

+ intro by Spike Lee A contemporary review Summer of Sam, set in New York during the heatwave of 1977 when serial killer David Berkowitz was terrorising the city, has been largely misrepresented b...

February 13, 2023 | EVENTS

Spike Lee
in Conversation

Director, writer, actor, producer, author and NYU Grad Film tenured professor Spike Lee is to receive a BFI Fellowship, the highest honour bestowed by the BFI. The fellowship recognises Lee’s pione...

February 13, 2023 | EVENTS

The Parent Trap

In Nancy Meyers’ fun remake of The Parent Trap (1961), identical twins Hallie and Annie, separated at birth after their parents’ divorce, accidentally discover each other, some years later, at a su...

February 13, 2023 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

Mirror

Olivier Assayas on ‘Mirror’ What interests me in cinema is not cinema in itself, but what cinema, as an exploratory tool, catches in its nets. So for me Mirror is not a film, it is something that ...

February 13, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Throne of Blood

In 1955, the great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa and his colleagues began work on an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, transposing from medieval Scotland to medieval Japan the tale of a ...

February 12, 2023 | KUROSAWA

The Third Man

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It is hard now to credit that there was a time when Carol Reed was seriously touted as the world’s greatest living director. Still, ...

February 12, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Some Like It Hot

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘Sensationally funny, one of the best scripts ever, Marilyn Monroe at the peak of her incandescence, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon bey...

February 12, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Killer of Sheep

It’s hard to believe there was a time when Killer of Sheep wasn’t widely recognised as a canonical work. The operative word however, is ‘widely’: it got great reviews from its premiere in 1978. So ...

February 12, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Red Beard

+ intro by Ian Haydn Smith, season co-curator (Saturday 11 February only) Kurosawa’s last black and white film was his final collaboration with Mifune. It might not be one of their best-known work...

February 11, 2023 | KUROSAWA

Iron Giant

What’s it about? Hogarth Hughes is an intelligent nine-year-old who befriends a 50-foot alien robot, which recently landed in the United States and is being hunted by government agents who believ...

February 11, 2023 | BFI FAMILIES

Free Renty
Lanier v. Harvard

In celebration of Black History Month USA, this compelling documentary tells the story of Tamara Lanier, an African American woman determined to force Harvard University to cede possession of dague...

February 11, 2023 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

Bicycle Thieves

A contemporary review Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, like Rossellini’s Paisa, came to London with a fabulous reputation to live up to, and, in a way, to live down. To Paisa, a film made in a s...

February 11, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Barry Lyndon

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the mysteries of Stanley Kubrick’s career is why he seized upon William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon for...

February 11, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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Ordet

The Danish playwright and Lutheran country priest, Kaj Munk (1898–1944), whose play Ordet (1932) is the basis of Dreyer’s astonishing 1955 film, once declared that the aim and object of all true ar...

February 10, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
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