BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Penthesilea - Queen of the Amazons

Laura Mulvey on ‘Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons’ Peter’s and my shared love of Hollywood films had, from the earliest days of our relationship, been an integral part of our daily and our social ...

November 6, 2025 | Laura Mulvey
Thinking through Film

Riddles of the Sphinx

‘A film like Riddles of the Sphinx is designed to separate form from content, so that the spectator is simultaneously aware of each.’ That is how, in 2002, Peter Wollen summed up one basic strategy...

November 4, 2025 | Laura Mulvey
Thinking through Film

Laura Mulvey in Conversation

A towering presence in debates surrounding independent cinema, gender and psychoanalysis in film, classical Hollywood, writing and filmmaking, the author of the seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and ...

November 4, 2025 | Laura Mulvey
Thinking through Film

Sunset Song

Terence Davies on ‘Sunset Song’ Sunset Song, Davies’s adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Scottish novel, is partly a paean to a landscape and the changing seasons within it, and Davies a...

November 2, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Farewell My Concubine

+ introduction by Carol-Mei Barker, BFI Programme Lead for Schools and Specialist in Chinese Cinema Covering much the same historical period as The Last Emperor, and with much the same Steadicam s...

November 2, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

Far from Heaven

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Todd Haynes has managed, surprisingly successfully, to build different levels of audience access into Far from Heaven, almost like t...

November 2, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

High School

The screening on Thursday 13 November will include a discussion about Frederick Wiseman’s aesthetics and approach with filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman and curator Matthew Barrington Although some ...

November 1, 2025 | Frederick Wiseman

The Deep Blue Sea

In his centenary year, dramatist Terence Rattigan, long considered the outmoded epitome of bourgeois English theatre, has again become fashionable, with a spate of West End revivals. His new modish...

November 1, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Breaking the Waves

Lars von Trier on ‘Breaking the Waves’ Breaking the Waves has taken five years and four million pounds to realise. Where did the original idea for the film come from? I prefer to work with unassa...

November 1, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

Titicut Follies

How does Titicut Follies stand up today? Its effect is still devastating. Were the film a muck-raking exposé, it might now seem merely a dated document. But Wiseman is beyond self-righteous anger o...

October 29, 2025 | Frederick Wiseman

Spring in a Small Town

Fei Mu is considered part of the Second Generation of Chinese filmmakers, memorably captured in Centre Stage (aka Ruan Lingyu, 1991), Stanley Kwan’s biopic of actress Ruan Lingyu. The Second Genera...

October 29, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

Remembering Terence Davies

We are pleased to announce Mark Kermode will be joined by actors Debi Jones and Ann Mitchell, cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, producers Sol Papadopoulos, Roy Boulter and Sean O’Connor, writer ...

October 28, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

A celebrated fashion designer plunges into desperate isolation when the object of her affections, a beautiful yet flighty ingenue, fails to return her devotion. A gender-flipped and painfully vulne...

October 26, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The Neon Bible

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review No director – probably not even Quentin Tarantino – is more thoroughly saturated in popular culture than Teren...

October 25, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

The House of Mirth

Terence Davies on ‘The House of Mirth’ How did the idea for The House of Mirth originate? I first read the novel about 15 years ago. And then about five years ago I went to Channel 4 – David Auki...

October 24, 2025 | Re-releases

Crooklyn

In an article for Sight and Sound, cultural theorist bell hooks famously referred to Crooklyn as a failure of ‘counter-hegemonic representation’. Originally pitched to mainstream audiences as a fam...

October 22, 2025 | Big Screen Classics

Camila

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. A contemporary review Camila gains much of its power from the circumstances of its production. Its story of a tragic love affair be...

October 22, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

The Terence Davies Trilogy

The screening on Tuesday 21 October will be introduced by season curator Ben Roberts In 1977, as new students at the National Film School, the first thing we had to do was watch one another’s fil...

October 21, 2025 | Love, Sex, Religion, Death
The Complete Films of Terence Davies

Enamorada

We’re delighted to confirm this screening will be of the BFI Archive’s brand new 35mm print made with funding from the National Lottery and the additional support of donors to our Keep Film on Film...

October 21, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

7th Heaven

The screening at the [2018] BFI London Film Festival of Frank Borzage’s 1927 masterpiece 7th Heaven in a new restoration was cause for rejoicing. But Borzage, who directed movies from 1913 to the e...

October 20, 2025 | Too Much
Melodrama on Film

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