BFI
BlackmailSaturday, 07 July 2012
The premiere of the newly restored version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 silent classic Blackmail, outdoors at the British Museum, will go down as one of the defining moments of the London 2012 cultural extravaganza. This was a thrilling,... Read more... |
Storyville: Hitler, Stalin, and Mr Jones, BBC FourFriday, 06 July 2012
The Storyville documentary strand must rank as one of the special glories of British television. As its opening titles unfold in different languages, we can only celebrate programmes that still give time to international stories, told in their own... Read more... |
Bruce Lacey: Art's Great AdventurerWednesday, 04 July 2012
“Bruce Lacey has had this unbelievable career,” says the Turner prizewinning artist Jeremy Deller. “His is an alternative version of British art history - people didn't seem to know that Bruce has intersected with British history. I felt he deserves... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Hugh HudsonSaturday, 23 June 2012
Thirty years ago the British were coming. So cried Colin Welland rallyingly from the stage of the Academy Awards, having just accepted an Oscar for best screenplay. And now Chariots of Fire is coming again, twice. An energetic stage reincarnation... Read more... |
DVD: Roll Out The Barrel - The British Pub on FilmFriday, 08 June 2012
Five and a half hours of documentaries about beer and pubs. The temptation is to stock up on pork scratchings and consume the whole lot in one session, but this wonderful, handsomely-restored two-disc set is best savoured in several sittings. There’... Read more... |
DVD: The Queen on Tour/A Royal OccasionTuesday, 05 June 2012
BOAC, BEA, and Britannia: the recent past is so near and yet so far. All have now disappeared from the national consciousness but, in these two DVDs, the flagship planes of the British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways appear... Read more... |
DVD: The Black PantherTuesday, 22 May 2012
The bad taste left by The Black Panther lingers like a mouthful of cinders long after it’s been expelled from the DVD player. This latest entry in the BFI's Flipside series of rescued British film obscurities is the shocking adaptation of the story... Read more... |
The Bad and the BeautifulWednesday, 18 April 2012
In the golden age of the movies that was 1952, The Bad and the Beautiful must have seemed quite a radical attack on the industry. A gorgeous opening sequence suggests that we are to be treated to an unadulterated love letter to the pictures: the... Read more... |
BFI celebrates ‘The Genius of Hitchcock’ in a major new retrospectiveWednesday, 18 April 2012
Launched to the press today with an hour-long presentation and Hitchcockian lunch, the British Film Institute proudly unveiled a fittingly hefty programme of screenings, events, exhibitions and publications celebrating the work of Alfred Hitchcock... Read more... |
Argentine Film FestivalTuesday, 17 April 2012
A couple of years ago a retrospective season for the BFI sought to reflect the filmmaking renaissance across South America that started at the end of the 1990s, and simply hasn’t stopped. Freed from the shackles of dictatorship and economic hardship... Read more... |
Vincente Minnelli: Celebrating Mr HollywoodMonday, 02 April 2012
For most film buffs, the name of director Vincente Minnelli immediately recalls the quintessence of the MGM musical of the 1940s and 1950s - a world of fantasy, brilliant colours, stylish décor and costumes in which Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene... Read more... |
BFI Southbank Preview: Made in BritainSaturday, 31 March 2012
If you’re game for a galling statistic, here’s one that’s guaranteed to stun: at present, only 14 per cent of British films released in the UK are directed by women. If that seems oddly as well as infuriatingly low, it’s probably because so many of... Read more... |
