BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Cowboy Bebop – The Movie

It’s 2071 and Earth has been abandoned for settlements on different moons and planets in the solar system. The spaceship Bepop is home to a group of bounty hunters who are seeking a terrorist threa...

April 14, 2022 | ANIME

Patlabor - The Movie

In a speculative 1999, and facing an oncoming typhoon, the Tokyo police force finds itself caught up in a mysterious plot involving a suicide and the suspicious reprogramming of thousands of Labors...

April 13, 2022 | ANIME

Benedetta

Paul Verhoeven interviewed by Kleber Mendonça Filho When I visited the Benedetta shoot almost four years ago in Italy, on a very hot day, the scene I saw being shot was part of the insurrection at...

April 13, 2022 | PREVIEW

The Year of the Sex Olympics

The Year of the Sex Olympics was first broadcast as part of BBC2’s Theatre 625 and provides an excellent example of writer Nigel Kneale at his most imaginative but downbeat. His earlier work, Quate...

April 12, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

Royal Space Force
The Wings of Honneamise

Contains explicit imagery of sexual violence. In an alternative world we follow a would-be astronaut as he joins a small, disenfranchised group, the Royal Space Force. Known as much for its troubl...

April 12, 2022 | ANIME

Quatermass and the Pit

The third series – and perhaps the best – featuring Nigel Kneale’s hugely successful creation, the steadfast scientific genius Professor Bernard Quatermass, Quatermass and the Pit (BBC) was also th...

April 11, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

The Gospel According to Matthew

Although Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to Matthew (Il Vangelo secondo Matteo) is habitually praised as a key work both of the director’s oeuvre and of world cinema as a whole, sma...

April 11, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Worzel Gummidge Restoration Screening

We are delighted to announce that the guests at this event will include actors Mike Berry, Lorraine Chase and Jeremy Austin Bullock. With renewed interest in Worzel Gummidge thanks to Mackenzie Cr...

April 10, 2022 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Scenes from a Marriage

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Originally a six-part TV miniseries, Scenes from a Marriage was subsequently edited into this feature-length cinema version. Created...

April 10, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

The New World

This singular vision of early 17th-century America from Terrence Malick is a work of astounding elemental beauty, a poetic meditation on nature, violence, love, and civilisation. It reimagines the...

April 10, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Steamboy

A retro science-fiction epic set in Victorian England, Steamboy features an inventor prodigy named Ray Steam who receives a mysterious metal ball containing a new form of energy capable of powering...

April 9, 2022 | ANIME

Faithless

+ extended intro by Liv Ullmann The enigma that is Faithless has been created by at least seven storytellers, none of whom can be trusted. At its simplest, the film consists of the fantasies of an...

April 9, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Please note: viewers may find allegations in this film deeply upsetting; they will be discussed in the post-screening Q&A. Around midnight on 18 September 1961, a small plane flying over a rem...

April 9, 2022 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

CODA

Oscar winner Marlee Matlin stars as Jackie and newly-crowned Oscar winner Troy Kotsur is her mischievous husband Frank, parents who have created a close knit family unit and have grown to depend on...

April 9, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Maquia - When the Promised Flower Blooms

The vertical threads are the passing days. The horizontal ones are the lives of mankind. The people of Iorph live far away from the lands of men, weaving the happenings of each day into fabric call...

April 8, 2022 | ANIME

Liv Ullmann in Conversation

We’re delighted that Liv Ullmann returns to BFI Southbank to talk about her extraordinary career in film and television as part of our season celebrating the much-admired actor-director. We’ll gain...

April 8, 2022 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Compartment No. 6

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Train movies are as old as cinema itself; ever since the famous arrival in 1896 of a steam locomotive in the gare de La Ciotat. Of c...

April 8, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

The Passion of Anna

+ intro by Geoff Andrew, Programmer at Large, (on Thursday 14 April only). A contemporary review The implacable silence of God has been a central theme of Bergman’s films for the last fourteen yea...

April 7, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Une femme douce

Dostoevsky wrote A Gentle Creature in 1876 (five years before his death) and included it in his Writer’s Journal. He had heard of three suicides, young women who had died within a matter of months....

April 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Small Body

+ Q&A with director Laura Samani Director’s Statement In 2016, I discovered that in Trava, in my Friuli Venezia-Giulia, existed a sanctuary where up until the 19th century, particular miracle...

April 6, 2022 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
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