BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Doctor Who - Horror of Fang Rock

+ Q&A with Louise Jameson, John Abbott and Annette Woollett The making of ‘Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock’ Even before it began, Season 15 was causing headaches for the Doctor Who production ...

February 4, 2024 | EVENTS

Petulia

John Barry wrote an unsettling, anxious score for Richard Lester’s time capsule of late sixties, psychedelia-era San Francisco. The film also includes cameos from the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin...

February 3, 2024 | JOHN BARRY
SOUNDTRACKING BOND AND BEYOND

American Fiction

Author and activist James Baldwin once said, ‘If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.’ This quote then begs the question: What does it mean to be seen as Black? Who...

February 3, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Zone of Interest

This chilling drama from the director of Under the Skin is an extraordinary and unsettling work that won’t easily be forgotten. Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss lives with his family in a comfortab...

February 2, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

A Man for Burning

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Following a series of acclaimed shorts and a documentary, the Taviani Brothers’ narrative feature debut was co-directed with early c...

February 2, 2024 | MAGICAL REALISM
THE FILM FABLES OF THE TAVIANI BROTHERS

Days of Heaven

A contemporary review At the risk of being accused of repeating himself, Terrence Malick has here virtually re-orchestrated (though with incomparably greater richness) the principal features of Bad...

February 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Adaptation.

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the best jokes in Being John Malkovich, the previous film by writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, was the flashba...

February 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Le Mépris

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Though visually dazzling, Le Mépris is among the darkest and most serious of Godard’s early films – and one of his greatest. When Pa...

February 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

+ intro & discussion In common with many key figures in Werner Herzog’s films, Kaspar Hauser is at odds with his surroundings. Having been isolated through childhood, he is then abandoned in...

January 29, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

Shooting the Past
25th Anniversary

+ Q&A with writer-director Stephen Poliakoff and actors Lindsay Duncan and Timothy Spall Often cited as Stephen Poliakoff’s masterpiece, this story of an American corporation’s proposed takeov...

January 28, 2024 | EVENT

Your Fat Friend

+ Q&A with director Jeanie Finlay and Aubrey Gordon Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay (Seahorse, Sound It Out) follows the journey of writer and activist Aubrey Gordon, who wen...

January 27, 2024 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA PREVIEW

A Trick of the Light

Perception is of course subjective, but the collective viewing experience can conjure a magic all of its own. Images swirl and distort in our memories, and films we’ve seen can swim to the surface ...

January 27, 2024 | LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

My Father's Dragon

Ever since the surprise Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination for their debut film, The Secret of Kells (2009), Irish studio Cartoon Saloon has enjoyed a blossoming international reputation among ...

January 27, 2024 | CARTOON SALOON AT 25

Poor Things

Faraway a bell is ringing, maybe a cruise-ship bell or a cathedral chime or a cornershop ding, because there’s a new, lovely thing alive in the world and it is Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. A fil...

January 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Into the Abyss
A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life

Werner Herzog makes an unlikely American. Of all the ‘New German Cinema’ directors who surged in European film culture in the 1970s, Wim Wenders seemed the one most likely to cross the pond. Wender...

January 26, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

British Short Films on Film

+ intro by directors Andrea Arnold, Ngozi Onwurah and John Smith This programme includes drug use, strong racial language and implied animal cruelty. A selection of the best British short films e...

January 26, 2024 | LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

Growing Up in Public

Coming of age is far from easy, as these competition-nominated films demonstrate. Growing pains and harrowing encounters are par for the course as we navigate the twisting road of identity, family ...

January 25, 2024 | LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

There Are New Suns

‘There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns’. Octavia E. Butler Filmmaking and watching offer us a way to imagine new horizons, or alternative worlds that are already out there. Wh...

January 24, 2024 | LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

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 21, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

In Conversation
Cartoon Saloon’s Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey and Paul Young

The Oscar-nominated creative team from Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon share their secret for success. With films like The Secret of Kells, The Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, My Father’s Dragon and W...

January 21, 2024 | EVENTS