BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Girl Who Leapt through Time

Every sci-fi fan knows that time-travel is never easy. Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, compared history to badly plastered wallpaper; push one bubble down and anot...

May 1, 2022 | ANIME

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway’s story of a doomed love affair between an American ambulance driver and a nurse is turned into a full-blown tearjerker by Frank Borzage. With luminous close-ups of Gary Cooper and...

May 1, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Baise-moi

The films of the New French Extremity and the accompanying focus on Gaspar Noé examine an important, controversial and highly violent cinema movement. They are not suitable for all. The film you a...

May 1, 2022 | CRUEL FLESH
FILMS OF THE NEW FRENCH EXTREMITY

We're All Going to the World's Fair

Director’s Statement When I was 13 years old, I would stay up late writing scary stories about serial killers and vampires on an online horror message board. I was a morbid, creative kid still dec...

April 29, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

BUG 62

Now, where were we? Ah yes. A mere two years and three months after the last time we did this, BUG is back at BFI Southbank with a brand new show of outstanding creativity from the world of music v...

April 29, 2022 | EVENTS

The Funhouse

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. If you want to understand Tobe Hooper’s relationship to and impact on the horror genre, you could do worse than watching one of his ...

April 28, 2022 | TERROR VISION

Illuminating the Wilderness

+ discussion with artists and makers from Project Art Works Illuminating the Wilderness offers a window onto the experiences of a group of neurodiverse artists, filmmakers, families and carers ...

April 26, 2022 | EXPERIMENTA - RELAXED SCREENING

Ghost in the Shell

Beautifully animated and disturbingly prophetic, Ghost in the Shell is a futuristic tale centred on Public Security Section 9’s hunt for supreme hacker The Puppet Master. This is a world where gove...

April 25, 2022 | ANIME

The Woman in Black

Nigel Kneale has demonstrated his predilection for ghost stories in such distinctive television dramas as The Road (BBC, tx. 29/9/1963), Quatermass and the Pit (BBC, 1958-59), and The Stone Tape (B...

April 24, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

Miss Julie

+ intro by Elaine Wong, short film programmer, BFI London Film Festival (Friday 29 April only). If all American literature is made of tributaries of Mark Twain’s Mississippi and, as Dostoevsky had...

April 24, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

The Northman

The word ‘visionary’ has been grossly devalued in the world of cinema. For a long time, ‘visionary director’ has pretty much meant anyone with an excitable publicist, a sturdy CGI budget and a know...

April 22, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Firebird

Peeter Rebane came across the story of Firebird seven years ago, through the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. There, he spoke with film critic and actor, Sergei Lavrentiev who gave him a copy of...

April 22, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Ennio

During the five years of filming Ennio, director Giuseppe Tornatore travelled across the globe to interview over 70 renowned filmmakers and musicians about the life and work of Ennio Morricone, fro...

April 22, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Saraband

Three decades after Scenes from a Marriage (1973), Saraband – which Ingmar Bergman has declared will be his final work – stages a rematch between that film’s stars, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson...

April 19, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

I Confess

Set and filmed largely in Quebec, and exploiting the city’s architectural atmosphere, rich in the traditions of French Catholicism, I Confess is the Hitchcock film which treats most fully the relig...

April 17, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Sebastiane

The mid-1970s were not an auspicious time to launch into feature film production. In 1975 the British film industry was collapsing fast. Cinema admissions had been falling rapidly since the 50s (in...

April 16, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Emigrants

+ pre-recorded intro by Sarah Lutton, season programmer Lots of films purport to show us what the past was like. Jan Troell’s magnum opus invites us to live there, so all-encompassing is its inves...

April 16, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Playground

Director Laura Wandel on ‘Playground’ Playground, the debut feature by Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel, was one of the discoveries of 2021, winning the Fipresci Award for the Un Certain Regar...

April 15, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Patlabor 2

It’s 2002, three years after the events of the original film, and national stability is threatened when Tokyo is placed under martial law amid tensions between the Japanese armed forces and police....

April 15, 2022 | ANIME

The Last Temptation of Christ

Scorsese on ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ Barbara Hershey, who plays Magdalene, gave you a copy of The Last Temptation of Christ in 1972. Did you read it then and know immediately you wanted to ...

April 15, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Girl Who Leapt through Time

A Farewell to Arms

Baise-moi

We're All Going to the World's Fair

BUG 62

The Funhouse

Illuminating the Wilderness

Ghost in the Shell

The Woman in Black

Miss Julie

The Northman

Firebird

Ennio

Saraband

I Confess

Sebastiane

The Emigrants

Playground

Patlabor 2

The Last Temptation of Christ

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