BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Citizen Kane

Andrew Sarris on the 50th anniversary of the opening of ‘Citizen Kane’ Citizen Kane erupted on to the screen, at least as a long-lived figure of speech, on 1 May 1941 at New York’s Palace Theater. ...

August 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Raging Bull

Sitting in a movie theatre as the credits rolled on The Death Collector (1975), Raging Bull’s casting director Cis Corman felt they could have found their Joey LaMotta. The film hadn’t made much of...

August 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz on ‘La Haine’ La Haine is 25 years old. Since Mathieu Kassovitz’s debut first screened there’s arguably not been another French film that has had as significant an impact. In the...

August 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Devi + Pikoo

+ pre-recorded intro by Sangeeta Datta SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Contemporary reviews On a first glance you might see Devi as no more than a film with a thes...

August 6, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Persona

What is emotionally darkest in Bergman's film is connected particularly with asub-theme of the main theme of doubling: the contrast between hiding or concealing and showing forth. The Latin word pe...

August 5, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Lightyear

What’s it about? Young astronaut Buzz Lightyear is the member of a spaceship crew who are stranded on a planet 4.2 million light years from Earth. His repeated attempts to return home backfire, but...

August 5, 2022 | FAMILIES

The Harder They Come

Jimmy Cliff brings a knockout soundtrack and charisma aplenty to this classic crime drama. A film that needs no introduction to anyone with so much as the slightest interest in reggae or Jamaican c...

August 5, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

Charulata

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Two hands, a man’s and a woman’s, reach tentatively out to each other. But just before they meet, the frame freezes. Reconciliation...

August 5, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

Rockers

‘Greetings and love to one and all.’ Originally conceived as a documentary about the late 70s scene, Theodoros Bafaloukos’s wonderfully loose, quirky and free-wheeling film gradually morphed into a...

August 4, 2022 | FROM JAMAICA TO THE WORLD
REGGAE ON FILM

Gaslight

Following the success of his first two films, The High Command in 1936 and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery in 1939, director Thorold Dickinson was offered the opportunity to direct the adaptation of Pa...

August 4, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Forever a Woman

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Inspired by the life of celebrated female poet Fumiko Nakajō, who met an untimely death aged 32 from breast cancer, Tanaka embarked ...

August 3, 2022 | KINUYO TANAKA
A LIFE IN FILM

The Music Room

‘The Music Room is a deeply felt, extremely tedious film. On the one hand its western derivations are patent (the Greek-revival mansion no more than the Chekhovian theme). On the other hand its chi...

August 1, 2022 | SATYAJIT RAY
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM

The Manchurian Candidate

In September 1961, Frank Sinatra – the most widely publicised of the president’s friends – was a weekend guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. Among other things, Sinatra used his visit to...

August 1, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Love Letter

Love Letter is the first film of legendary actor turned director Kinuyo Tanaka. The man writes love letters to make a living. One of the women who asks him to do so is someone he’s been searching f...

August 1, 2022 | KINUYO TANAKA
A LIFE IN FILM

Inna de Yard

While recording a collaborative album in Stony Hill, Jamaica, and preparing for a concert in Paris, a group of reggae veterans including Cedric Myton, Ken Boothe, Judy Mowatt and Lloyd Parks discus...

August 1, 2022 | FROM JAMAICA TO THE WORLD
REGGAE ON FILM

Conscientious Protectors

Conscientious Protectors puts you right in the middle of the beginnings of the Extinction Rebellion movement. The film follows the founding members of the non-violent direct action climate change g...

August 1, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Elizabeth R

After the great public and critical success of The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), the BBC turned hopefully to the turbulent life of the King’s daughter, Elizabeth. The approach was essentially th...

July 30, 2022 | GLENDA JACKSON

Paris, Texas

Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) walks out of the desert after four years, to the amazement of his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Reunited with Hunter, his seven-year-old son, Travis decides ...

July 29, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

Hit the Road

If modern Iranian cinema already has one family filmmaking dynasty established in the Makhmalbafs (father Mohsen, followed by daughters Samira and Hana), step forward a second second-generation tal...

July 29, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Grey Gardens

‘The most incredible documentary of all time.’ (Jenny Newman, BFI Member) It’s a documentary, but you couldn’t make it up. Imagine if John Waters shot a script by Tennessee Williams and it was bro...

July 29, 2022 | MEMBER EXCLUSIVES