TEST Programme Notes TEST

BFI Southbank

Kundun

+ intro by writer Ian Haydn Smith (on Monday 5 August only) A breathtaking visual and aural experience, Scorsese’s magisterial epic charts the early life of the Dalai Lama, from his being identifi...

August 5, 2024 | SHIFTING LAYERS
THE FILM SCORES OF PHILIP GLASS

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

+ intro by Alan Friswell, the conserver and restorer of Ray Harryhausen’s models (Sunday 4 August only) When Sinbad and his crew find a piece of golden tablet carried by a tiny winged creature, th...

August 4, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas

Director Henry Selick on ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas’ Disney is marketing its latest feature as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas. But though the film is based on a poem...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride

In the twelve years since The Nightmare before Christmas, which was directed by Henry Selick but conceived by Tim Burton, stop-motion animation has become almost an endangered technique. The makers...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Frankenweenie

From concept to filming, the making of Frankenweenie was a labour of love, involving a huge crew of artisans, animators, prop makers, puppet makers, designers and artists. Over the years it took to...

August 3, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Werckmeister Harmonies

Béla Tarr’s films since 1987, in collaboration with screenwriter/novelist László Krasznahorkai, may be challenging in their often extreme use of duration, but they are hardly short on narrative dri...

August 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

The Tale of the Fox

Please note that the few sentences in French in the short film The Mascot are not subtitled, but you’ll find a translation below. A crafty fox that keeps tricking people becomes the source of much...

August 2, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

Alma's Rainbow

‘I could write a book on the response to Alma’s Rainbow. The film took a long time to make. I raised all the money independently. Distributors came and looked at the film, and there was a real spli...

August 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Fantastic Mr Fox

The hero of Wes Anderson’s animated film Fantastic Mr Fox gazes into his wife’s eyes. ‘I’m just dying to tell you the truth about myself,’ he says, apologising for the trouble he’s caused. ‘I’m a w...

August 1, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

In a Lonely Place

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. ‘I was infatuated with her, but I didn’t like her very much’: so began director Nicholas Ray’s relationship with Gloria Grahame, wh...

July 29, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Eraserhead

Content warning: Contains strong gore and disturbing surreal imagery. David Lynch’s debut feature takes us into the heart of a bleak industrial wasteland, exploring the grotesque underbelly of m...

July 29, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

I Saw the TV Glow

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Faya Dayi

A film ten years in the making, Faya Dayi was conceived by director Jessica Beshir as an act of reconnecting with the Ethiopian homeland she left at the age of 16, when her family fled to Mexico to...

July 26, 2024 | TIGRITUDES
A PAN-AFRICAN FILM CYCLE 1956-2024

About Dry Grasses

The latest work from the Turkish auteur behind Once upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep is an arresting, character-driven study of loneliness and self-interest. Samet, an art teacher assigned ...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Verdict

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Some 25 Years on from 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet returned to the drama of the court room and provided Paul Newman with his most vuln...

July 22, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

F for Fake

In 1970 François Reichenbach, with the British journalist Richard Drewett, made Elmyr: The True Picture?, a 40-minute BBC documentary about Elmyr de Hory, the Hungarian faker of 20th-century master...

July 22, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Daughters of the Dust

The ascension of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust to recognition as one of the greatest films of all time hardly comes as a surprise to Black women moviegoers, who championed the film from its ea...

July 22, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

12 Angry Men

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the plot. Lumet’s landmark courtroom drama – which actually takes place in the jury’s deliberation chamber – centres on Henry Fonda, typecast but supe...

July 22, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Crossing

No-nonsense Lia, a retired teacher, turns up on the doorstep of affable aimless Achi, who lives in a Georgian backwater. Lia is trying to build bridges with her niece Tekla, a twenty-something tran...

July 19, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Third Man

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It is hard now to credit that there was a time when Carol Reed was seriously touted as the world’s greatest living director. Still, ...

July 15, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

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