BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Kurt Vonnegut
Unstuck in Time

When he was younger, enthralled by his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, Robert Weide wrote a letter to Kurt Vonnegut, proposing to make a documentary on the author. Surprisingly, Vonnegut agreed, and the...

July 22, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

The Stranger

After the heart attack that interrupted filming on The Home and the World, Satyajit Ray completed only three more films before his death. His Ibsen adaptation, An Enemy of the People, was disappoin...

July 21, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

The Mirror Has Two Faces

+ intro by BFI Events Programmer Kimberley Sheehan Rose (Streisand), an unlucky-in-love college professor, is at the end of her tether with dating. Thanks to her sister’s meddling she’s thrown tog...

July 21, 2022 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies!!?

+ live experimental music introduction by The Howling. Set around a series of murders connected to a creepy sideshow fortune teller, The Incredibly Strange Creatures is an unusual, unpredictable r...

July 20, 2022 | EXPERIMENTA

Eve's Bayou

Kasi Lemmons began her career as an actor, appearing in films such as School Daze (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Candyman (1992), before moving into directing with the short Dr. Hugo (...

July 19, 2022 | IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha

Ray on ‘The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha’ In your fairytale The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha , did American musicals provide you with any models? No, I don’t think so. Goopy Gyne was completely...

July 17, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

The Maids

Jean Genet’s The Maids is an outstanding example of the French avant-garde wave of playwriting that flowered after World War II and produced such other major dramatists as Ionesco and Beckett. The ...

July 16, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

Satyajit Ray
His Home and the World

Join us for an afternoon of talks and discussions offering different approaches to appreciating Satyajit Ray, and looking at his influences and legacy. Expert speakers will trace key themes in his ...

July 16, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Alice in the Cities

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Wim Wenders’ first road movie contrives a situation whereby an emotionally detached photojournalist ends up chaperoning a precociou...

July 15, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

Stevie

‘Stevie Smith is the lady in the corner of Twentieth Century verse in English, the one with the ghastly floral hat and knitting. Only when you look closer do you notice that those flowers are real ...

July 14, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

In the Black Fantastic introduction + Touki Bouki

In the Black Fantastic: a conversation with Ekow Eshun In the Black Fantastic is curator Ekow Eshun’s two-pronged exploration of Black speculative arts and fiction, with an exhibition at Hayward Ga...

July 13, 2022 | IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

Scarlet Empress

+ intro by Geoff Andrew, Programmer-at-Large (Wednesday 13 July only). Arguably the finest of the Dietrich-Sternberg collaborations, this offers a magnificently ornate, gleefully excessive account...

July 13, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Company Limited

Satyajit Ray on ‘Company Limited’ Did you consciously set out with the idea that Days and Nights in the Forest , The Adversary and Company Limited would form a new trilogy? I didn’t think of it d...

July 13, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

The Romantic Englishwoman

Joseph Losey on ‘The Romantic Englishwoman’ You made some changes from Thomas Wiseman’s novel. What interested me most about it were the various points of view – the fantasy of the husband about ...

July 10, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

The Railway Children Return

+Q&A with writer Danny Brocklehurst, director Morgan Matthews, producer Jemma Rodgers and actors Jenny Agutter, KJ Aikens, John Bradley, Beau Gadsden, Eden Hamilton, Austin Haynes and Zac Cudby...

July 10, 2022 | FAMILIES

The World of Apu

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In general, Satyajit Ray’s films embarrass the critics. Admirers go impressionistic, talk airily of Human Values, and look offended ...

July 9, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

The Unvanquished

In the second part of the Apu trilogy, Ray captures the pulsating spirit of the ancient city of Varanasi where Apu grows from child to adolescent. After his father’s death, Apu leaves to study in C...

July 9, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Laurent Garnier
Off the Record

+ Q&A with Laurent Garnier Whenever a new musical trend emerges, it rubs up against misunderstanding and disdain from institutions and the ‘mainstream’ of the time. Blues, Jazz, Folk, Rock, Re...

July 9, 2022 | SONIC CINEMA

Matewan

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Ever since he made his directing debut with Return of the Secaucus Seven in 1979, John Sayles’s reputation has rested largely on bot...

July 8, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Brian and Charles

Director’s Statement Brian and Charles is about a lot of things. I wouldn’t want to dictate to anyone who watches it what interpretation they should have. Primarily, it’s about loneliness and the p...

July 8, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Kurt VonnegutUnstuck in Time