BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Blue Jean

For many in the UK, the story of Section 28 and its eventual repeal is a triumphant memory of unity and activism. Resistance to the Conservative government’s attempt to prohibit the ‘promotion’ of ...

February 10, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

The 400 Blows

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the greatest films about childhood, Truffaut’s partly autobiographical first feature is also profoundly moving. Forever in tr...

February 10, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
50=

Wanda

Isabelle Huppert on ‘Wanda’ I first saw Barbara Loden’s film many years ago, though it was long after its original release; despite support from Marguerite Duras, it had become more or less invisib...

February 9, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
48=

Fear Eats the Soul

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Like Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s other recent imitations of life, Fear Eats the Soul achieves a remarkable balance between stylisatio...

February 9, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
52=

Edward Hopper

+ intro by Steven Foxon, Curator BFI National Archive, producer Patsy Nightingale and director of photography Patrick Duval A contemporary review ‘Where to start?’ muses the narrator-director at t...

February 9, 2023 | ART IN THE MAKING

Shadow (Relaxed Screening)

Introduced by Clare Baines (Disability Equality Lead, BFI) and Matthew Hellett, Lead Programmer, Oska Bright Film Festival. Challenging expectations is at the heart of Shadow. A group of activis...

February 8, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

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 demand...

February 8, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
50=

Joyland

+ Q&A with director Saim Sadiq In inner city Lahore, Haider, a quiet and seemingly happy house husband is pressured by his fiercely patriarchal father into finding work. He takes a job in an e...

February 8, 2023 | PREVIEWS

Dreams

A portmanteau work comprising eight tales inspired by recurring dreams the director had, Kurosawa’s penultimate film – the first solely written by him since 1945’s The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s ...

February 8, 2023 | KUROSAWA

News from Home

Regardless of how often I’ve revisited Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, I continually find new details to admire. The experience is much like strolling around a favourite neighbourhood and being p...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
52=

8½

Back in the 1960s heyday of the pre-video art-house sector, two filmmakers stood as defining poles of the foreign-language art movie – Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. Their qualities complemen...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
31=

The Battle of Algiers

There are few classic films with as much relevance to the early 21st century as Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 re-enactment of the Algerian liberation struggle of the preceding decade. The Battle of Algie...

February 7, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
45

Psycho

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A contemporary review What keeps the public happy is undoubtedly their obsession with narrative craftsmanship. Your average critic,...

February 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
31=

Casablanca

It’s still the same old story. [Over] 75 years after it was released, Casablanca remains one of the world’s best-loved films. Not just the best-loved, but best-remembered. Many cinephiles can quote...

February 6, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
63=

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

+ intro with director Pierre Földes Based on a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami, this animated feature film follows the lives of multiple characters as they navigate post-tsunami exi...

February 6, 2023 | PREVIEW

Stalker

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Stalker was freely adapted from the 1971 novel Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a dark satire which had ...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
43=

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 ...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
38=

Kurosawa and Shakespeare
Adaptation and Reinvention
An illustrated talk
by Adrian Wootton

In this lavishly illustrated talk with clips and slides Adrian Wootton (CEO of Film London and film curator) will explore Kurosawa’s remarkable trilogy of films, Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well...

February 5, 2023 | KUROSAWA

L'Atalante

No one achieved more in less time than Jean Vigo – how would the history of cinema be different if he had lived past 29? L’Atalante remains raw, strange, radical and singular. You don’t watch it so...

February 5, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
34

North by Northwest

‘Brilliant performances by Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau, stunning set pieces, a riveting mistaken identity tale and a beautiful soundtrack – this is an absolute classi...

February 4, 2023 | SIGHT AND SOUND GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME 2022
45=