BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Fruitvale Station

Ryan Coogler’s debut Fruitvale Station is a perceptive docudrama that reconstructs the final day in the life of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black resident of Oakland, California. In the early hours ...

October 22, 2022 | CLOSE-UP - RYAN COOGLER

The Falls

A record of a cataclysm that never was, The Falls is the epic, lengthy but highly-rewarding culmination of Greenaway’s experiments through the 1970s, channelling sci-fi, mockumentary and the writin...

October 22, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

Creed

Coogler revitalised the Rocky franchise with his second collaboration with lead actor Michael B Jordan. It’s nothing short of exhilarating, with fluid and immersive fight scenes, as well as a surpr...

October 22, 2022 | CLOSE-UP - RYAN COOGLER

The Saddest Music in the World

The Saddest Music in the World is set in Winnipeg during the Great Depression of 1933. Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), a once successful Broadway impresario now on the skids, arrives back in his home...

October 21, 2022 | GUY MADDIN

Prick Up Your Ears

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With an Alan Bennett script based on John Lahr’s biography of Joe Orton, Stephen Frears’ film about the shifts in power in the playw...

October 21, 2022 | GARY OLDMAN

Emily

In her directorial debut from her own original screenplay, Frances O’Connor paints a stunningly beautiful and playful portrait exploring the life and relationships that inspired Wuthering Heights. ...

October 21, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Nil by Mouth

An uncompromisingly frank portrait of a particular sector of working-class family life in south-east London (where Gary Oldman grew up), Nil by Mouth is a powerful, astute, authentically foul-mouth...

October 20, 2022 | PREVIEW

Gary Oldman in Conversation

Since making his film debut in the early 1980s, Gary Oldman has established himself as one of the most successful movie stars of the modern era. Renowned for the range, power and subtlety of his pe...

October 20, 2022 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Peter Greenaway
Frames of Mind Season Introduction

Join us for a panel discussion exploring our Peter Greenaway season and his career as director, film philosopher and visual artist. Chaired by season programmer Justin Johnson, this season introduc...

October 19, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

Bram Stoker's Dracula

+ intro by award-winning writer and broadcaster Christopher Frayling, in celebration of his upcoming book Vampire Cinema (Wednesday 19 October only) Coppola’s version of Stoker’s novel – determine...

October 19, 2022 | IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS

The Belly of an Architect

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Experienced viewers of Peter Greenaway’s films, even if they are relatively familiar with architectural histor...

October 19, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

A Zed & Two Noughts

Twin zoologists, grieving the death of their wives in a collision involving a car and a swan, gradually form a bond with the woman who was driving the vehicle that caused their spouses’ demise. The...

October 18, 2022 | FRAMES OF MIND
THE FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY

The Others

Who’d have thought that things could still go bump in the night and render 21st-century sophisticates witless with terror? Who’d have believed that the uncanny in its most moth-eaten Miss Havisham ...

October 17, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

My Winnipeg

UK distribution for the films of the avant-garde Canadian director Guy Maddin has been erratic, with only The Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Dracula Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) and The ...

October 17, 2022 | GUY MADDIN

Meantime

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Leigh’s TV film about an East End family faced with unemployment and recession in Thatcher’s Britain, Oldman plays Coxy, volatile...

October 17, 2022 | GARY OLDMAN

Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave begins with the detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountaintop. When he meets the deceased man’s wife Seo-rae, he starts to suspect her at the sam...

October 17, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

The Passion of Remembrance

Almost 40 years after it was first made, the Sankofa collective’s The Passion of Remembrance remains salient. The film is a grand tapestry filled with allusions to the intersectional concerns, moti...

October 8, 2022 | BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2022

No Time to Die

Where once the James Bond films played as separate adventures, linked by characters both malevolent and benign, EON Productions wanted the Daniel Craig series to unfold as a unified whole. Quantum ...

October 2, 2022 | JAMES BOND AT 60 WEEKEND

Madly, Deeply
A celebration of Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman was an exceptional performer and human being, much loved by his fellow actors and the general public. This event celebrates and remembers his life and work, and launches the publicatio...

October 2, 2022 | EVENTS

The Living Daylights

The first Bond film to star Timothy Dalton, The Living Daylights is a familiar mixture of popular elements from the series, given a certain political relevance through allusions to glasnost and the...

October 1, 2022 | JAMES BOND AT 60 WEEKEND