BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Moonlight

You stand, wrapped in that strange communal spell during the thunderous ovation, as the memory of cinema floods back. Not the explosive, momentarily gratifying, empty-bellied franchise juggernaut t...

November 5, 2021 | MEMBER PICKS

Black History Walks Presents
Cause for Concern
Equal Before the Law

In the summer of 1969 a documentary was broadcast by the BBC series Cause for Concern, which set out in detail a number of shocking cases of police brutality and corruption against members of the B...

November 5, 2021 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

Career Girls

Mike Leigh on ‘Career Girls’ Where did the idea for Career Girls come from? All my films are full of ongoing, running ideas. It’s not the kind of movie where there’s one idea. And I’m fascinated,...

November 5, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

All or Nothing

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The opening shot of All or Nothing might in its concentrated dourness seem a peculiar cause for celebration. The camera is stationed...

November 3, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

Primitive London

Another Stanley Long and Arnold Miller exposé of the ‘real’ London, now with a Mondo Cane flavour that leaves you with whiplash as you veer from naughty glimpses of burlesque shows, to mods and roc...

November 1, 2021 | EDGAR WRIGHT’S LONDON AFTER DARK

20-22 Omega

A nonverbal and nonfiction cinematic project exploring the humanity of the Anthropocene. Homo Sapiens is a species of bipedal primates characterised by dependence upon language and complex tools. ...

November 1, 2021 | GREEN LIGHT
AN IMMERSIVE FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Last Night in Soho + Q&A

+ Q&A with Edgar Wright. Writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon will be joining the Q&A, which will be hosted by Justin Johnson, BFI Lead Programmer. Louis CK onc...

October 31, 2021 | IN PERSON & PREVIEWS

In the Cut

In one of In the Cut’s early scenes, English professor Frannie is teaching her students about Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. They look bored, apathetic. One complains that all that happens in ...

October 31, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Ichi the Killer

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. With titles such as Dead or Alive (1999), Audition (2000), City of Lost Souls and Visitor Q (both 2001), the controversial Japanese ...

October 31, 2021 | J-HORROR WEEKENDER

Body and Soul

+ intro by Kevin Le Gendre, author, broadcaster and deputy editor of Echoes magazine. Body and Soul, made for a segregated Black audience, is a key work of pioneering African American filmmaker Os...

October 31, 2021 | SILENT CINEMA

The Small World of Sammy Lee

Anthony Newley stars in the Uncut Gems of early 1960s Brit cinema. He’s a motormouth nightclub MC whose gambling debts are going to result in two broken legs. Thus we see Sammy run through his comp...

October 30, 2021 | EDGAR WRIGHT’S LONDON AFTER DARK

No Country for Old Men

Laconic is the word. Say little but say it well. Write in sentences sand-blasted by time, words sucked to stone before they’re spoken. Such is the prose of Cormac McCarthy, a beauteous thing winnow...

October 30, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Kirikou and the Sorceress

What’s it about? Karaba, a powerful sorceress, is responsible for the local spring running dry and for removing nearly all the male inhabitants of a West African village – but Kirikou is able to wa...

October 30, 2021 | BFI FAMILIES

Cure

Impressive box-office returns for Hollywood game-changers The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Se7en (1995) created the commercial context for Kiyoshi Kurosawa to deliver this theatrical serial-kill...

October 30, 2021 | J-HORROR WEEKENDER

The Silence of the Lambs

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. What marks out The Silence of the Lambs [from other serial killer films] is that it is a profoundly feminist movie. For women I know...

October 29, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Seven Samurai

When Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai premiered in Japan on 26 April 1954, it was the most expensive domestic production ever, costing 125 million Yen (approximately $350,000), almost five times the ...

October 29, 2021 | RE-RELEASES

Ring

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘Ring’ in this context refers to the sound of a telephone, though there’s also the connotation, in English, of a vicious circle with...

October 29, 2021 | J-HORROR WEEKENDER

French Dispatch

Wes Anderson’s films have always had a Russian doll quality, containing tales within tales within tales, but his new anthology film The French Dispatch takes his love of storytelling to another lev...

October 29, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Dark Water

According to Alfred Hitchcock’s oft-quoted ‘bomb-under-the-table’ theory, the key to screen thrills is the anticipation, rather than the realisation, of an approaching terror. It is a lesson well p...