BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Steamboy

A retro science-fiction epic set in Victorian England, Steamboy features an inventor prodigy named Ray Steam who receives a mysterious metal ball containing a new form of energy capable of powering...

April 9, 2022 | ANIME

Faithless

+ extended intro by Liv Ullmann The enigma that is Faithless has been created by at least seven storytellers, none of whom can be trusted. At its simplest, the film consists of the fantasies of an...

April 9, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Please note: viewers may find allegations in this film deeply upsetting; they will be discussed in the post-screening Q&A. Around midnight on 18 September 1961, a small plane flying over a rem...

April 9, 2022 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

CODA

Oscar winner Marlee Matlin stars as Jackie and newly-crowned Oscar winner Troy Kotsur is her mischievous husband Frank, parents who have created a close knit family unit and have grown to depend on...

April 9, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Maquia - When the Promised Flower Blooms

The vertical threads are the passing days. The horizontal ones are the lives of mankind. The people of Iorph live far away from the lands of men, weaving the happenings of each day into fabric call...

April 8, 2022 | ANIME

Liv Ullmann in Conversation

We’re delighted that Liv Ullmann returns to BFI Southbank to talk about her extraordinary career in film and television as part of our season celebrating the much-admired actor-director. We’ll gain...

April 8, 2022 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

Compartment No. 6

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Train movies are as old as cinema itself; ever since the famous arrival in 1896 of a steam locomotive in the gare de La Ciotat. Of c...

April 8, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

The Passion of Anna

+ intro by Geoff Andrew, Programmer at Large, (on Thursday 14 April only). A contemporary review The implacable silence of God has been a central theme of Bergman’s films for the last fourteen yea...

April 7, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Une femme douce

Dostoevsky wrote A Gentle Creature in 1876 (five years before his death) and included it in his Writer’s Journal. He had heard of three suicides, young women who had died within a matter of months....

April 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Small Body

+ Q&A with director Laura Samani Director’s Statement In 2016, I discovered that in Trava, in my Friuli Venezia-Giulia, existed a sanctuary where up until the 19th century, particular miracle...

April 6, 2022 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
POWERED BY JAGUAR

My Night with Maud

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Eric Rohmer had made two features and a sizeable number of shorts and documentaries before My Night with Maud (1969), a mature and c...

April 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Shame

+ intro by Catharine Des Forges, Director, Independent Cinema Office (Tuesday 5 April only) SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review As in Persona, th...

April 5, 2022 | LIV ULLMANN - FACE TO FACE

Nineteen Eighty-Four

We screen the restored version of this famous and much-discussed drama to celebrate its first official release on BFI Blu-ray (released on 11 April). The original broadcast proved highly controvers...

April 4, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

Belladonna of Sadness

+ intro by Helen McCarthy, founder of Anime UK (later Anime FX) (Monday 4 April only) An outlier from the moment of its conception, Belladonna of Sadness is a psychedelic watercolour trip that is...

April 4, 2022 | ANIME

Out of the Unkown
The Chopper

Join us for a very special table reading of one of Nigel Kneale’s most coveted lost dramas, The Chopper, made as part of the BBC’s sci-fi anthology drama series Out of the Unknown. A mechanic who c...

April 3, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

Wuthering Heights

Having both worked on Emily Brontë’s gothic romance for a (lost) 1953 BBC production, Kneale and Cartier revisited the novel for their last collaboration together. Dennis Potter, then television cr...

April 2, 2022 | NIGHTMARES & DAYDREAMS
A CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF SCREENWRITER NIGEL KNEALE

Aguirre, Wrath of God

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. All Werner Herzog’s fictions evince a fascination with the mechanisms of human madness – especially those engendered by the will to ...

April 2, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

A Night of Knowing Nothing

Winner of the Golden Eye for Best Documentary at Cannes 2021, A Night of Knowing Nothing is the bold and distinctive feature debut from acclaimed shorts filmmaker Payal Kapadia. Framed by fictional...

April 1, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Cries and Whispers

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The first voices to be heard in Cries and Whispers are those of an army of clocks, muttering and chiming in a litany of comment at t...

April 1, 2022 | RE-RELEASES

Babette’s Feast

Towards the end of Isak Dinesen’s story, when the two Puritan sisters realise that the magnificent meal they have just been seduced into enjoying has cost the unheard of sum of 10,000 francs, that ...

April 1, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS