BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Vera Drake

Mike Leigh on ‘Vera Drake’ The film’s feeling for 1950 is very vivid. What is your attitude to that period? I was seven in 1950 so my recollections are there in the spirit of what you see. The f...

November 12, 2021 | MIKE LEIGH

Shaft

Renowned photojournalist Gordon Parks’ second film as director boasts a fine performance by Richard Roundtree as private eye John Shaft, investigating the activities of a Harlem racketeer who hires...

November 12, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Naked

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In London, down tunnels and stairwells, empty streets and motorways, a grimy young man stalks the night. A black coat hangs down to ...

November 12, 2021 | RE-RELEASES

Becoming Cousteau

‘I saw my job as getting people to know and love the sea… Because you only protect what you love.’ (Jacques Cousteau) In 2021, we can visualise the world under the ocean thanks to the popularity o...

November 12, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Female Archetypes in Classical Japanese Cinema

Representation of women played an important role throughout the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, with a proliferation of recurring narrative tropes and familiar character types. Join invited speakers...

November 11, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi’s first samurai film is one of the genre’s major masterpieces, not least for its exploration and criticism of the ritual facades governing the samurai code of honour – if notions o...

November 10, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum

This delicately sentimental account of a teenage romance by melodrama specialist Keisuke Kinoshita is one of the most touching of Japanese films. Narrated in flashback, it uses silent-film-style ma...

November 9, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Marital Relations

Despite paternal disapproval, the heir to a wealthy family embarks on a relationship with a geisha. Another filmmaker deserving of greater fame in the West, Shiro Toyoda is celebrated particularly ...

November 7, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Godzilla

Made in 1954, Godzilla was Japan’s first foray into the big budget feature, costing ten times as much as the average Japanese movie and twice as much as the same studio’s Seven Samurai which was re...

November 7, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Love Letter

Love Letter is the first film of legendary actor turned director Kinuyo Tanaka. The man writes love letters to make a living. One of the women who asks him to do so is someone he’s been searching f...

November 6, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

An Inn at Osaka

From the archives: a 1956 profile of Heinosuke Gosho ‘The purpose of a film director’s life is to describe the real life around him and create works which express the true feelings of human beings...

November 6, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

A Date with the Devil
Darcus Howe’s Journey from Black Power to Broadcasting

Born in Trinidad during the dying days of British colonialism, Darcus Howe settled in the UK in the 1960s. As an activist he was central to organising political campaigns, including the historic Ma...

November 6, 2021 | AFRICAN ODYSSEYS

My Love Has Been Burning

My Love Has Been Burning has in more ways than one a central position in Mizoguchi’s suite of feminist ﬁlms of the late ’40s and early ’50s, which stretches from The Victory of Women to The Life of...

November 5, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

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