Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Brokeback Mountain

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The prose style of Annie Proulx’s 1997 story ‘Brokeback Mountain’, first published in the New Yorker, is doggedly brisk. The moment ...

February 9, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Woman Next Door

Mike Figgis on ‘The Woman Next Door’ The following scene takes place 19 minutes and 45 seconds into François Truffaut’s 1981 film, The Woman Next Door: Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) is in a supermar...

February 8, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

My Own Private Idaho

At the opening of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, we look down a very long stretch of two-lane highway, bisecting the desert scrubland, curving upwards as it disappears into the distant mounta...

February 8, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Happy Together

+ intro by Yi Wang, Queer East (on Tuesday 8 February only) A trip to Buenos Aires reveals the dark side of love as a gay couple (Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung) struggle with jealousy, co-dependenc...

February 8, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Watermelon Woman

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Twenty-five years after Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, the first US feature directed by an ‘out’ Black lesbian, you can count ...

February 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

La Peau douce

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Truffaut’s La Peau douce was greeted with a certain coolness at Cannes. Was it really understood? The film is about an editor of a ...

February 6, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Mississippi Mermaid

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Oddly enough, after Moreau’s obsessive hunt in La Mariée était en noir, and before the more jocular manipulati...

February 6, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Maurice

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review After the near-perfection of A Room with a View, which transformed an only intermittently entertaining piece o...

February 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Rent

After seeing Rent soon after it opened on Broadway, director Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) was so inspired, he immediately corralled his 1492...

February 5, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Finally Sunday!

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It is in the nature of wheels to turn full circle. Two years after attacking the Cannes jury as ‘a pack of incompetents who doze thr...

February 5, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Fahrenheit 451

Nicolas Roeg on Fahrenheit 451 I’ve always felt that, although Truffaut was greatly revered and admired, at the same time, in terms of film and how much he loved film, he was underestimated. Becaus...

February 5, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Anne and Muriel

The screening on Thursday 17 February will be introduced by actor Kika Markham. SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. David Thomson on ‘Anne and Muriel’ Truffaut called...

February 5, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

African Redemption
The Life and Legacy of Marcus Garvey

The charismatic Caribbean hero and Pan Africanist Marcus Mosiah Garvey is regarded globally as one of the world’s foremost 20th-century civil-rights leaders. Filmed in Jamaica, Ghana, Canada, USA, ...

February 5, 2022 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS - UK PREMIERE

Zapata's Gang
The Eskimo Baby

Asta Nielsen was perhaps surprisingly adept at broad comedy, though there’s always a transgressive twist. In Zapata’s Gang, she plays an actor, as she often would, in self-reflexive reference to he...

February 4, 2022 | IN THE EYES OF A SILENT STAR
THE FILMS OF ASTA NIELSEN

Jules et Jim

In 1912, Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) and the Austrian Jules (Oskar Werner) become firm friends, happily sharing their enjoyment of Paris, art, literature and women, even when their adoration of the...

February 4, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

The Handmaiden

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Park Chan-wook’s last film, the US-made Stoker (2013), seemed at the time like a blind alley for the South Korean king of the baroqu...

February 4, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Bride Wore Black

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Penelope Houston on Hitchcock’s influence on Truffaut In the introduction to his Hitchcock interview book, François Truffaut lists 2...

February 4, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

The Black Dream
The Film Primadonna

In this early role for Asta Nielsen, suited to her mastery of melodrama, she plays Stella, a circus star pursued by two suitors – a handsome count and a creepy jeweller. The Black Dream becomes a h...

February 4, 2022 | IN THE EYES OF A SILENT STAR
THE FILMS OF ASTA NIELSEN

Beautiful Thing

Please note: this film contains dialogue that some viewers find offensive, and which does not reflect the views of the BFI. The mid-1990s was a watershed period for independent gay and lesbian fil...

February 3, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Abyss
The ABC of Love

+ intro by season curator Pamela Hutchinson (Thursday 3 February only) SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. ‘She tore a piece of quivering human flesh out and held it ...

February 3, 2022 | IN THE EYES OF A SILENT STAR
THE FILMS OF ASTA NIELSEN

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