BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Babadook

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Post-millennial horror has proven to be particularly accommodating to women directors, from the Soska Sisters, Jen and Sylvia (Dead ...

December 15, 2022 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA

Twelve Monkeys

Dangling in mid-air, the bald man works diligently, sifting through clues to a monumental puzzle, piece by piece. Across one wall of a forbidding 21st century archive he has pasted the headlines of...

December 14, 2022 | MEMBER PICKS

Arrebato

A key movie from the movida madrileña, the explosion of countercultural creativity that erupted in Spain in the years following the death of Franco, Iván Zulueta’s second film is a radical, unpredi...

December 14, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

This Man Is Mine

+ intro by film historian Carole Sharp This Man Is Mine is based on the hit stage play A Soldier for Christmas which opened in the West End from 3 February 1944 and ran for most of the year. It wa...

December 13, 2022 | PROJECTING THE ARCHIVE

Every Day Except Christmas

+ intro by Patrick Russell, Senior Curator, BFI National Archive A new wave of documentary art and an affectionate appreciation of the hard-working. Tonight we explore Lindsay Anderson’s landmark ...

December 13, 2022 | ART IN THE MAKING

The Muppet Christmas Carol (Relaxed Screening)

+ intro and discussion. Michael Caine plays Ebenezer Scrooge in this Christmas comedy favourite that appeals across the generations. The exuberant Muppets take on Dickens’ characters, offering th...

December 12, 2022 | RELAXED SCREENING

Goltzius and the Pelican Company

+ extended intro by Peter Greenaway (Saturday 10 December screening only) Peter Greenaway, one of the most inventive, ambitious and controversial filmmakers of our time, returns to the cinematic a...

December 10, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

The Incantation of Casanova

As part of our Centenary salute to the BBC, we present this very special screening of a major BBC production that resides in the BFI National Archive. We have remastered sound and visual elements f...

December 9, 2022 | BBC CENTENARY SPECIAL

Peter Greenaway in Conversation

Peter Greenaway’s career as an artist, writer and filmmaker has spanned six decades. Throughout, he has consistently challenged established forms of narrative filmmaking, never compromising, while ...

December 9, 2022 | EVENTS

Black Sunday

The often imaginative and stylistically rich world of Italian horror has been enjoying a critical and popular renaissance in recent years, with several marginalised directors of the 1960s and 70s r...

December 9, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

The Shining

+ extended introduction by Lee Unkrich SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away most of the plot. Jack Torrance applies for the job as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel high in the Colorado Ro...

December 8, 2022 | EVENTS

The Lure

Introduced by Dr Catherine Wheatley, Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska on ‘The Lure’ The film’s primary setting is the dance hall in which Silver and ...

December 7, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Eisenstein in Guanajuato

Peter Greenaway on ‘Eisenstein in Guanajuato’ I discovered the films of Eisenstein by accident when I was 17 in 1959 in an East London cinema. My first amazement was Eisenstein’s Strike, made in 1...

December 7, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

Cat People

Everyone agrees that the title came first: Cat People. In March 1942, Russian-born Val Lewton – formerly a pulp novelist, pornographer, publicist, story editor and second-unit producer – left a jo...

December 7, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Transness in Horror

Panellists: Sarah Cleary, Fey Kapur, Sam Moore, and Alison Rumfitt will be in conversation, with Jaye Hudson hosting. Many of the twentieth-century’s most notable depictions of gender-nonconformin...

December 6, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Let the Right One In

According to Mexican maestro Guillermo del Toro, creator of the award-winning Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s ‘a chilling fairytale, as delicate, haunting and poetic a film as you’ll ever see’. For Hollywoo...

December 6, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Happy Valley

+ Q&A with James Norton, Siobhan Finneran, Will Johnston and Jessica Taylor Sally Wainwright’s multi-BAFTA award winning hit Happy Valley features Sarah Lancashire in her iconic role of Sergea...

December 6, 2022 | TV PREVIEWS

Nightwatching

Like Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell, Peter Greenaway is a cinematic adventurist who for several decades wowed the British arthouse with a succession of challenging and deeply idiosyncratic films, onl...

December 3, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

Night of the Eagle

Growing up with a fascination for the macabre, I sat up alone watching every horror film that turned up on late night TV. My education included the Universal horrors of the 1930s and 40s and Jacque...

December 2, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

Lynch/Oz

A fascinating, multi-perspective documentary that looks at the influence of The Wizard of Oz on the thoughts and working methodology of David Lynch. From The Alphabet to Twin Peaks: The Return the ...

December 2, 2022 | NEW RELEASES