BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Hunger

Often lambasted as an exercise in style over content, Tony Scott’s take on the vampire genre is indeed a little showy, though given Scott’s background in TV commercials it’s perhaps not surprising....

January 10, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

For the Love of People... The Films of François Truffaut

Good evening. First, thank you for coming to this talk on the films of François Truffaut. I hope you will find it interesting. I am no expert on Truffaut, but I greatly enjoyed revisiting his work ...

January 10, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Smiles of a Summer Night

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Ingmar Bergman’s first international success, this brings together a number of couples, would-be couples and ex-couples for a weeken...

January 9, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Labyrinth

What’s it about? Jim Henson’s cult fantasy fairy tale features David Bowie’s menacing Goblin King, who has taken young Sophie’s baby brother and placed him in the centre of a fiendishly challengin...

January 9, 2022 | BFI FAMILIES

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Bowie’s first starring role came in Nicolas Roeg’s visionary sci-fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth, the story of an alien’s surreal experiences after its spaceship crash lands on Earth. Bowie advan...

January 8, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

The Last Metro

A contemporary review It is not surprising that The Last Metro has proved François Truffaut’s most popular film to date both in France and the United States. It boasts two of France’s most popular ...

January 8, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Casque d'or

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Unsurprisingly, Truffaut revered Jacques Becker, a former assistant to Renoir who made films of a similarly fluent lyricism and emot...

January 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Boiling Point

At one of the hottest spots in London, during one of the busiest nights of the Christmas season, head chef Andy (Stephen Graham) is under pressure: he is running late, his restaurant is overbooked,...

January 7, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Truffaut greatly admired Ophuls and called this ‘an incredibly beautiful adaptation’ of Stefan Zweig’s story about a concert pianist (Jourdan) who receives a letter relating how the author develope...

January 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

BUG Special - David Bowie

Welcome to a very special edition of BUG. We’re here to celebrate the life and work of David Bowie – giant of popular music, creative powerhouse, artistic and cultural pioneer, in sound and visi...

January 6, 2022 | EVENTS

After Life
Season 3

+ discussion with Ricky Gervais, Penelope Wilton and Diane Morgan After Life, the critically acclaimed comedy-drama created by and starring Ricky Gervais returns for its final series with six new ...

January 6, 2022 | TV PREVIEWS

Touching the Void

Kevin Macdonald’s gripping documentary Touching the Void tells the story of an extraordinary escape from seemingly inevitable death. At its centre is mountaineer Joe Simpson, who at the age of 25 i...

January 5, 2022 | TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Love on the Run

A man in his early thirties, that day finally divorced, takes his son to the station to send him off on a school camping holiday. In order to carry out this assignment he has had to give up a date ...

January 5, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Basquiat

Artist Julian Schnabel’s directorial debut is a star-studded biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a gifted and prolific painter and street artist who died at the age of 27 after an exceptional rise thr...

January 5, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Twin Peaks
Fire Walk with Me

Originally met with universal derision, almost 30 years on Fire Walk with Me has had an exceptional reversal of fortune: the feature-length follow-up to the hit TV series is now heralded as a maste...

January 4, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Querelle

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Querelle is the 42nd and last ﬁlm by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died aged 37, only two months after it wrapped. The movie sums up...

January 4, 2022 | HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN
BOWIE AT THE MOVIES

Les Enfants terribles

Melville was something of a hero to the Nouvelle vague – Godard cast him in Breathless – and Truffaut, like many, admired this adaptation of Cocteau’s novel for its fidelity, the serenity and stren...

January 4, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Great White Silence

The race to the South Pole in 1910 is one of those great national stories – we all know how Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions met their tragic end after being beaten to the Pole by the...

January 3, 2022 | TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

L'Enfant sauvage

When Jean-Pierre Léaud turned his accusatory glance on the world in that last frozen frame of Quatre Cents Coups, he was asking the question Truffaut keeps returning to in his films. When innocence...

January 3, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

A Clockwork Orange

In the week that A Clockwork Orange first lurched into UK cinemas in January 1972, the song dominating the top of the charts was The New Seekers’ ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’, an ode to mu...

January 3, 2022 | HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN
BOWIE AT THE MOVIES