Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

As Above, So Below

The screening on Friday 1 October will feature a pre-recorded Q&A with director Sarah Francis. Director’s note A few years ago, the image of adults on a swing moving back and forth side by sid...

September 8, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

The Big Sleep

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. David Thomson on ‘The Big Sleep’ For decades now, since a Saturday in 1961 when I saw it three times in a row, coming out of one s...

September 7, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

200 Meters

Director’s Statement I carry lots of memories that I no longer have access to, or it could be that I fear to dwell back into it. Oppression does alienate you as it denies you your basic rights; esp...

September 7, 2021 | THE TIME IS NEW

The Undercover Man

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Picking through Joseph H. Lewis’ diverse filmography, it is quite easy to find evidence of a director with a strong personality – a...

September 6, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Copilot

+ Q&A with director Anne Zohra Berrached Anne Zohra Berrached on ‘Copilot’ What inspired you to make Copilot ? We live in a time when more and more families and relationships are broken by i...

September 6, 2021 | WOMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
POWERED BY JAGUAR

What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day?

+ Q&A with Pete Wiggs and Paul Kelly Once upon a time, most towns and cities had spots like the Lower Lea Valley. It was where the railway sidings were. Look in an old A to Z and the dense pa...

September 5, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Saint Etienne Shorts Programme

Introduced by Paul Kelly and Pete Wiggs Banksy in London It would be easy to be sceptical about Banksy in London, a video-length assemblage constructed by Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans when they wer...

September 5, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Lawrence of Belgravia

+ Q&A with Paul Kelly and Lawrence By turns funny and bleak, Lawrence of Belgravia is a finally moving portrait of an artist who has combined an unabashed but theoretical desire to achieve fam...

September 5, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Cry of the City

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The title and basic outline of Cry of the City (1948) might suggest that it belongs to a post-World War II cycle of urban crime mov...

September 5, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

How We Used to Live

+ Q&A with Pete Wiggs and Travis Elborough How We Used to Live is a celebration of post-war London by director Paul Kelly, created through a compelling use of rare footage drawn from the BFI N...

September 4, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Finisterre

+ Q&A with Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs Back, further back… to 2003. Finisterre seemed to come out of nowhere. Its makers all had form – as video directors (Kieran Evans), as members of cherishe...

September 4, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Blade Runner 2049

It would be almost impossible to list the ways in which Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) has impacted science fiction filmmaking. Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric...

September 4, 2021 | DENIS VILLENEUVE
THE PATH TO DUNE

The Bingo Long Traveling
All-Stars & Motor Kings

Richard Pryor joins an all-star cast in this Motown Productions’ charmer set in the waning days of baseball’s segregated Negro League. Billy Dee Williams stars as Bingo Long, a born showman, loosel...

September 4, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

Asunder

Introduced by Esther Johnson and Bob Stanley Esther Johnson’s Asunder is a unique and very special film. Instead of concentrating on military operations, the artist has researched and selected foo...

September 4, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

Wildfire

Born within a year of each other, Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone) and Kelly (Nika McGuigan) are ‘Irish twins’. You’d never see one without the other, but over the years the mystery of their mother’s death...

September 3, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

This Is Tomorrow

Introduced by Bob Stanley and Paul Kelly. In Britain, since sometime in the 2000s, the moment of wartime austerity and post-war reconstruction has gone from being a seldom-mentioned period, altern...

September 3, 2021 | THE FILMS OF SAINT ETIENNE

I've Been Trying to Tell You

+ Q&A with Alasdair McLellan and Bob Stanley Do you look back on the optimism of the 1997-2001 era as a lost golden age, or do you see it as a period of naïvety, delusion and folly? There’s a ...

September 3, 2021 | UK PREMIERE

Call Northside 777

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In one of the finest postwar Twentieth Century Fox crime films shot on location, James Stewart excels as a cynical journalist who h...

September 3, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Candyman

Urban Legend, American Truth – The History of Candyman Released in the fall of 1992, Bernard Rose’s Candyman was a pivotal moment in the history of the horror genre. For the first time, a major Am...

September 3, 2021 | NEW RELEASES

Some Call It Loving

+ Pre-recorded introduction (Monday 20 September only) The reasons why one thing haunts where another fades may not be fully present to consciousness. Sometimes only a few misremembered lines or a...

September 2, 2021 | A PRYOR ENGAGEMENT

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