BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Tokyo Olympiad

Near the beginning of Kon Ichikawa’s film of the Tokyo Olympic Games, a great iron builder’s weight is seen crashing into a half-demolished building as the Olympic Stadium begins to grow. The tone ...

November 20, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Pirates

+ Q&A with writer-director Reggie Yates and actors Elliot Edusah, Jordan Peters and Reda Elazouar. New Year’s Eve 1999. Cappo (Elliot Edusah), Two Tonne (Jordan Peters) and Kidda (Reda Elazoua...

November 20, 2021 | PREVIEWS

Peterloo

The ground is churned, dusty, an un-English yellow. This, and the scattering of broken corpses, suggest we are looking at a picture of a place far from home. Somewhere the law hasn’t quite reached....

November 20, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

Onibaba

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Kaneto Shindo’s best-known feature still packs a genuine wallop for its violence, its startlingly explicit sexuality (it’s not remot...

November 19, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Another Year

Mike Leigh and Lesley Manville on ‘Another Year’ Few people get to make so many films together. Has that process of working together changed at all over the years? Lesley Manville: I don’t think ...

November 19, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

The Hand of God

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Director’s statement Naples, blue and blundering, joyful and merciless – you can’t help loving her even when she hates you. The 198...

November 18, 2021 | PREVIEWS

The Family and Home in the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

The various spaces of the Japanese home provide one of the most inviting aspects of classical Japanese cinema. Join Professor Alastair Phillips (University of Warwick) to examine the changing repre...

November 18, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Drive My Car

There’s a moment in Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Clearances’ when he recalls peeling potatoes with his mother. Neither looked at one another, or paused. But their shared task offered intimacy – they were ...

November 15, 2021 | PREVIEWS

Topsy-Turvy
+ Q&A with Mike Leigh

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Imagine how startled you’d be to discover that Krzysztof Kieslowski had secretly made a series of knockabout comedies (Three Colours...

November 14, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

Yearning

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Hideko Takamine was Mikio Naruse’s great muse – as Setsuko Hara was Ozu’s and Kinuyo Tanaka was Mizoguchi’s – her peerlessly expres...

November 12, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Vera Drake

Mike Leigh on ‘Vera Drake’ The film’s feeling for 1950 is very vivid. What is your attitude to that period? I was seven in 1950 so my recollections are there in the spirit of what you see. The f...

November 12, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

Shaft

Renowned photojournalist Gordon Parks’ second film as director boasts a fine performance by Richard Roundtree as private eye John Shaft, investigating the activities of a Harlem racketeer who hires...

November 12, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Naked

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In London, down tunnels and stairwells, empty streets and motorways, a grimy young man stalks the night. A black coat hangs down to ...

November 12, 2021 | RE-RELEASES

Becoming Cousteau

‘I saw my job as getting people to know and love the sea… Because you only protect what you love.’ (Jacques Cousteau) In 2021, we can visualise the world under the ocean thanks to the popularity o...

November 12, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Female Archetypes in Classical Japanese Cinema

Representation of women played an important role throughout the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, with a proliferation of recurring narrative tropes and familiar character types. Join invited speakers...

November 11, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi’s first samurai film is one of the genre’s major masterpieces, not least for its exploration and criticism of the ritual facades governing the samurai code of honour – if notions o...

November 10, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum

This delicately sentimental account of a teenage romance by melodrama specialist Keisuke Kinoshita is one of the most touching of Japanese films. Narrated in flashback, it uses silent-film-style ma...

November 9, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Marital Relations

Despite paternal disapproval, the heir to a wealthy family embarks on a relationship with a geisha. Another filmmaker deserving of greater fame in the West, Shiro Toyoda is celebrated particularly ...

November 7, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Godzilla

Made in 1954, Godzilla was Japan’s first foray into the big budget feature, costing ten times as much as the average Japanese movie and twice as much as the same studio’s Seven Samurai which was re...