BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Brian and Charles + Q&A

+ Q&A with director Jim Archer, and writer-actors David Earl and Chris Hayward A winning new ‘odd couple’ comedy based on a successful short film. Comedian David Earl (Derek, Extras, After Lif...

July 8, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Two Daughters

Introduced by Aparna Sen Ray adapted Tagore’s short stories to mark the latter’s centenary year. In The Postmaster, a young lad from the city is sent to a remote village where a young orphan girl...

July 7, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Day of Wrath

Though set in 17th-century Denmark, Dreyer’s masterpiece feels strangely modern in its interest in the plight of women in patriarchal society. Cursed by a woman he sent to the stake for witchcraft,...

July 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Clock

+ Q&A Screening on the opening night of the I Will Tell International Festival is this coming-of-age romantic drama, set against the underground drum ‘n’ bass, acid and house music scene of ’9...

July 7, 2022 | PREVIEW

Blue Velvet

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In terms of David Lynch’s work, Blue Velvet marks a huge leap forward, almost magically establishing him as the most provocative an...

July 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Atlantics

Mati Diop on ‘Atlantics’ This film is inspired by your short film Atlantiques , about a group of Senegalese men who set sail for Europe. At what point did the focus change from the men who left to...

July 7, 2022 | IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

To Sleep with Anger

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Charles Burnett’s intriguing mix of melodrama and allegorical fable has a seemingly happy middle-class African-American family livi...

July 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Middleman

Over the years, there has been a delicate but perceptible shift in Satyajit Ray’s attitudes to his subjects. The characteristic Ray protagonist remains a young man, educated to higher expectations ...

July 6, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Daring and controversial at the time of release, this film grapples with the emotional fallout from a polyamorous relationship between young artist Bob (Murray Head), lonely doctor Daniel (Peter Fi...

July 5, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

Reel Stories
An Oral History of London’s Projectionists

+ Q&A Enjoy this premiere of a film exploring the unseen work behind the cinema screen. In this revealing documentary the filmmakers consider the types of people who become projectionists, the...

July 5, 2022 | SENIORS

Glenda Jackson
in Conversation

From the Oscar®-winning successes of Women in Love (1969) and A Touch of Class (1973) to the Emmy-winning TV role Elizabeth R (1971), Glenda Jackson’s talent and intensity have burned through big a...

July 5, 2022 | EVENTS

Yeelen

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It was, if memory serves, the young and impertinently iconoclastic journalist François Truffaut who walked out of the Cannes festiva...

July 3, 2022 | IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

Rome, Open City

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Made towards the end of WWII, Rossellini’s film about life in Rome under the Nazi Occupation – originally inspired by a priest servi...

July 3, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Pather Panchali

Satyajit Ray on ‘Pather Panchali’ I remember the first day’s shooting of Pather Panchali very well. It was in the festive season, in October, and the last of the big pujas was taking place that day...

July 3, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Horror of Darkness + Let's Murder Vivaldi

Horror of Darkness arrived in the early days of The Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964-70), just before the anthology series acquired its reputation as the often controversial highlight of the mid-1960s BBC...

July 3, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

Women in Love

When Women in Love opened theatrically in Britain in the autumn of 1969, its director, Ken Russell, had been a professional filmmaker for a full decade. Although he had only made two cinema feature...

July 2, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

Theorem

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a man of many qualities and contradictions – oft-noted when folks point to the strangeness of an atheist making The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) – and that is reflecte...

July 2, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Sankofa

The career of the Ethiopian-born, American-based writer-director Haile Gerima is a fascinating case study of the challenges faced by left-leaning, formally experimental black filmmakers. Consider t...

July 2, 2022 | IN THE BLACK FANTASTIC

Pandora's Box

Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) is a confounding film. It failed commercially, then soared in popularity long after it might have been forgotten. It is a masterpiece that has been mistreated...