BFI Southbank Programme Notes

It's Personal + Q&A

It’s Personal Kyla requires 24 hour care with everything from making artwork to having a wee; struggling with a care shortage during the pandemic, she asks filmmaker friend Lou to swap cameras for ...

December 4, 2021 | BUSTING THE BIAS

The Innocents

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘This perfectly independent and irresponsible little fiction,’ Henry James wrote in his preface to The Turn of the Screw, ‘this so f...

December 4, 2021 | A CLASS OF HIS OWN
THE FILMS OF JACK CLAYTON

Black Rain

Masuji Ibuse’s novel, published in 1966, is doubtless the most sophisticated of the many attempts by Japanese artists to come to terms with the experience and effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ...

December 4, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Terry Pratchett's The Abominable Snow Baby

What’s it about? When a great blizzard descends on the small town of Blackbury, home to Albert and his granny, it appears to have brought a 14-foot tall Abominable Snow Baby with it! Where the loc...

December 4, 2021 | BFI FAMILIES
FUNDAY TV PREVIEW

Woman of the Dunes

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s most famous film follows a hapless entomologist who misses the last bus home and ends up stranded on a beach in the hut of a destitute young widow. Anticipating Oshima Nagisa’...

December 3, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Tokyo Drifter

Seijun Suzuki’s absurdist thriller, certainly one of the most brilliant genre movies ever made, really needs to be seen in context to be enjoyed to the max. Suzuki was contracted to Nikkatsu in 195...

December 3, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Press Reset on Ableism + Disability On Screen – Past, Present and Future

Tackling the damaging impacts of Ableism, Press Reset aims to inspire decision makers in film and TV to reset their practices to establish a new normal for people with disabilities working in front...

December 3, 2021 | BUSTING THE BIAS

UK Premiere
Approaching Shadows

+ Panel discussion by TAPE Community Music and Film Approaching Shadows: The 2nd feature film from TAPE Community Music and Film During their golden wedding weekend away, Edward and Violet Knight...

December 3, 2021 | BUSTING THE BIAS

The Witches of Eastwick

‘A fantastic cast at the peak of their game… Jack Nicholson’s incredible wardrobe, strong female leads and let’s not forget Susan Sarandon’s hair!’ Eleanor Watkins, BFI Member Up Jumped the Devil ...

December 2, 2021 | MEMBER PICKS

The Shifting Spaces of
Modern Japanese Cinema

The 1960s brought seismic changes to Japanese cinema. In this richly illustrated panel discussion, our special guests will consider how the landscape of Japanese cinema changed between the 1960s an...

December 2, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Room at the Top

+ intro by BFI Curator Josephine Botting (Thursday 2 December only). SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. John Braine was a librarian in the Yorkshire town of Bingley w...

December 2, 2021 | A CLASS OF HIS OWN
THE FILMS OF JACK CLAYTON

Remember the Night

‘At the studio, writing Remember the Night for my new producer, Al Lewin, almost caused me to commit hara-kiri several times, but I postponed it for some later assignment… As it turned out, the pic...

December 2, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Naomi Kawase
Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth + Birth/Mother

The youngest Cannes Camera d’Or winner at 28 with her debut feature Suzaku (1997), Naomi Kawase maintains the highest international profile among the new wave of Japanese female directors who arriv...

December 1, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
ANOTHER GAZE

In the Realm of the Senses

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Perhaps it’s the fact that so few of Oshima’s films have been released here (twelve of the thirteen features m...

December 1, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

The Apartment

The Apartment may be set during the Christmas holidays but, despite its sophistication and peerless wit, it offers little in the way of festive cheer. This is a romantic comedy macerated in moral c...

December 1, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Petite maman

This screening will have a pre-recorded introduction by Lillian Crawford who is an autistic freelance film critic. The latest from the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Tomboy is a tend...

November 30, 2021 | RELAXED SCREENING

The Amazing Mr Blunden

+ Q&A with writer-director-actor Mark Gatiss and actors Tamsin Greig and Simon Callow, hosted by Mark Kermode. Starring Simon Callow (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love) as Mr Bl...

November 29, 2021 | TV PREVIEWS

Boxing Day

+ Q&A with writer-director Aml Ameen The first ever Black British rom-com, Boxing Day marks the ground-breaking directorial debut of acclaimed actor Aml Ameen. After making a splash in 2006’s...

November 27, 2021 | PREVIEWS

Introducing
'The Precious Things'
Holiday Startime

Hugh and I A fondly remembered and long-running sitcom that reunited Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd, who had worked together on stage many years earlier. The episodes were built around a simple but dur...

November 27, 2021 | MISSING BELIEVED WIPED

The London Palladium Show

His Lordship Entertains A change of channels for the crusty old peer Lord Rustless, who had earlier been seen in two series of Hark at Barker on ITV. The remainder of the cast, and the setting, Chr...