BFI Southbank Programme Notes

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

Don't Look Now

Nicolas Roeg on ‘Don’t Look Now’ To what extent was Don’t Look Now your own choice? A publicity handout says it was Peter Katz, the producer, who thought Daphne du Maurier’s story would make a good...

September 10, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Carnival

+ intro by Josephine Botting, Curator, BFI National Archive To mark 25 years since the death of British screen superstar Dorothy ‘Chili’ Bouchier, we present a rare outing of this archive print wi...

September 10, 2024 | PROJECTING THE ARCHIVE

Robin Redbreast

After being dumped by her partner, Norah moves to the countryside and falls for a local gamekeeper, with dire consequences. This is a perfect case study of the city-slicker moving to the country an...

September 9, 2024 | ROOTS, RITUALS AND PHANTASMAGORIA

Nightsleeper

+ Q&A with actors Alexandra Roach and Joe Cole, writer Nick Leather and executive producer Kate Harwood Nightsleeper is a real-time thriller for BBC iPlayer and BBC One. Created by BAFTA-winni...

September 9, 2024 | TV PREVIEW

Irma Vep

Shot in four weeks on a minuscule budget and written by director Olivier Assayas for the Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep explodes like a firework over its thematic terrain: a mourning...

September 9, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

Rio Bravo

Hawks’ acclaimed chamber western is at once defiantly idiosyncratic (complete with wordless prologue and musical interlude), leisurely in pace, and engrossing throughout, peppered with suspenseful ...

September 8, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Green for Danger

Eight years after The Gaunt Stranger, Sidney Gilliat once more did battle with a whodunit in this terse, wry thriller taken from a novel by Christianna Brand. Brand’s Inspector Cockrill investigate...

September 8, 2024 | MARTIN SCORSESE SELECTS HIDDEN GEMS OF BRITISH CINEMA

Song of the Exile

In her semi-autobiographical film, Ann Hui casts Cheung as Hueyin, an aspiring journalist living in London who is called back to Hong Kong to attend her sister’s wedding. Reunited with her family, ...

September 7, 2024 | MAGGIE CHEUNG
FILMS OF ROMANCE, MELANCHOLY AND MAGIC

Anomalisa

As motivational writer and speaker Michael Stone spends time in his hotel room while on tour, he dwells on the emotional distance he feels towards everyone. He befriends a woman named Lisa at the h...

September 7, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION ON THE BIG SCREEN

The Island
with live accompaniment by
the Balanescu Ensemble

+ Q&A with director Anca Damian and composer Alexander Balanescu A subversive take on Robinson Crusoe, Anca Damian’s film introduces us to an exile on an island who finds common ground with a ...

September 6, 2024 | SONIC

Black Narcissus

Powell and Pressburger’s delirious melodrama is one of the most erotic films ever to emerge from British cinema, let alone in the repressed 1940s – it was released just two years after David Lean’s...

September 6, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

In Camera

This bold and delightfully unpredictable portrait from Naqqash Khalid both highlights and critiques the challenges of navigating the UK film industry as a British Asian actor. Aden, a struggling ac...

September 5, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Do the Right Thing

During the hottest day of the year, Mookie (Lee) travels around his predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood making deliveries for the local pizzeria run by Italian American Sal (Aiello). As the ...

September 5, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Rear Window

Refocusing the Spectator: a comparison of the critical response to ‘Rear Window’ in 1954 and on its re-release in 1983 When Rear Window was first released in 1954, Hitchcock’s authorial mark was s...

September 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS