BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Station Six Sahara

Station Six Sahara is a big revelation. It’s minimal: they’re in the desert and these men are stuck together. I always found it to be very close to The King of Comedy, because it’s the comedy of ma...

September 22, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

The Damned

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With its potent mix of mysterious scientific experiments, radioactive children, portents of dystopian doom and biker gang violence, ...

September 21, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

The Hunger

The Hunger helped challenge my perception of what dark fantasy could be. It didn’t have to be epic in scale, but by employing a quieter register and mood it was possible to weave an entrancing stor...

September 19, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Zardoz

+ Q&A with writer-director John Boorman SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The head is a ferocious Greek mask, hacked from stone, its eyes fixed in a malevolent, ...

September 18, 2024 | EVENTS

The Shout

+ Q&A with filmmakers Daniel Kokotajlo and Mark Jenkin (Wednesday 18 September only) Jeremy Thomas on ‘The Shout’ I came back to England via a short stay in America, and a friend called Michae...

September 18, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

The Servant

+ intro by Ruby McGuigan, BFI Programme and Acquisitions (Wednesday 18 September only) SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a novel by Robin Maugham, The S...

September 18, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Elephant Man

Reece Shearsmith will introduce tonight’s screening – the first in an occasional series that sees him share his cinematic influences. SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s endi...

September 17, 2024 | EVENTS

White Lady + Children of the Stones

A woman in white holds a scythe and watches over a father repairing his rural home with his two daughters. I love White Lady – not just for its symbolic storytelling and rural setting, but for its ...

September 16, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Mandy

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Nightmare is never far away in Alexander Mackendrick’s films. It’s there in the street-pursuit of Sidney Stratton in The Man in the ...

September 16, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Terence Fisher Double Bill
To the Public Danger + Stolen Face

To the Public Danger Before he directed his series of horror classics for Hammer, Terence Fisher demonstrated his versatility across a range of genres. His early short To the Public Danger is an at...

September 15, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

My Life as a Courgette

A stop-motion family animation, indebted to Ken Loach, with the curious title My Life as a Courgette: that’s already quite a billing to live up to, but Swiss director Claude Barras’s first feature ...

September 15, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

Uncle Silas

Uncle Silas and Maud Ruthyn first appeared in 1864 as a serial in the Dublin University Magazine, before being published in three volumes as Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. The author, Joseph...

September 14, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Hue and Cry

In the forties, before the establishment of the specialist Children’s Film Foundation, the commercial arm of the British film industry still sometimes made films especially for children, and Hue an...

September 14, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

A Warning to the Curious + Baby

When you’re in the mood, there’s nothing quite like a 1970s British ‘curiosity killed the cat’ creeper. Don’t mess with weird effigies and cursed relics buried in the ground or walls of your new ho...

September 13, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

My Favourite Cake

Writers/Directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha on ‘My Favourite Cake’ This charming and quietly subversive tale from Iran delivers on all levels. Lonely Mahin is 70 and struggling. Her hu...

September 13, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Eraserhead

In his first film, Eraserhead, David Lynch created a world from which everything has been stripped away except for the anxiety at its heart. Henry Spencer tramps numbly across a ruined industrial l...

September 13, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Quay Brothers
in Conversation

Stephen and Timothy Quay, identical twins, were born in Norristown, near Philadelphia, in 1947. After graduating in 1969 from the Philadelphia College of Art, where they studied illustration and gr...

September 12, 2024 | EVENTS

Hunger

Steve McQueen on ‘Hunger’ Why did you want to tell the story of Bobby Sands and the republican hunger strike? It happened in 1981 when I was 11 years old, and it had a big effect on me. It was a t...

September 12, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Mary and Max

Adam Elliot on ‘Mary and Max’ Mary and Max is my fourth clayography, and up to now, each of my films has explored the life of a singular person. With Mary and Max, I explore two simultaneous biogra...

September 11, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

Farewell China

Clara Law’s film is a dark and harrowing depiction of the immigrant experience. Cheung portrays Li Hung, a woman who emigrates to New York, leaving her husband Zhou behind in rural China. Although ...

September 11, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC