May 2011 at BFI Southbank London

Featuring Russian season Kino

and Bernardo Bertolucci 

 

This May BFI Southbank will unveil its most ambitious review of Russian cinema ever with KINO: Russian Film Pioneers, an epic project and a fresh approach that includes three two-month seasons (Kino, Kosmos and Sukorov) and a BFI national release of Sergei Eisenstein’s seminal Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1926). The Bernardo Bertolucci season concludes with a last chance to watch his brilliant second film Before the Revolution Prima della rivoluzione (1964). Chad based writer-driector Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man (2010) won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year and will screen as an Extended Run this month, along with a season of his films. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and to pay tribute to his literary and musical genius a selection of his adapted works will screen, including films bySatyajit Ray. The Nation’s Health, as depicted on television, will be explored from Emergency Ward 10 (ATV, 1959) and General Hospital (ATV, 1974), to Only When I Laugh (YTV, 1979) and No Angels (C4-World Productions, 2004). 

 

A wealth of previews will be offered throughout May, including Joe Wright’s hotly anticipated Hanna (2011), starring Cate Blanchett and Saoirse Ronan, Mammuth (2010), with Gérard Depardieu and a special screening ofCopacabana (2010), to mark the presentation of a BFI Fellowship to Isabelle Huppert. Documentaries include the Cannes and London Film Festival hit Le Quattro Volte (2010), Asif Kapadia’s telling of the Brazilian motor-racing champion Senna (2011), and Steven Riley’s Windies cricket documentary Fire in Babylon, plus a Q&As with each of these films’ directors. And a newly restored Apocalypse Now (1979) receives an Extended Run, starting at the end of the month.

 

Seasons

KINO, Russian Film Pioneers, will launch on 5 May with the world premiere of Eisenstein’s The Old and The New (aka The General Line, 1929) featuring a new score commissioned by the BFI and composed by Max De Wardener, Ed Finnis and The Elysian Quartet, who will play live to this screening. A second and exclusive event follows on 20 May when Storm Over Asia (aka The Heir to Genghis Khan, 1928), by Vsevelod Pudovkin, will screen accompanied by a live performance from Yat-Kha – Tuvan musicians who mix traditional Russian music and throat-singing with contemporary rock. KINO starts with silent films from the grandfathers of modern cinema – visionaries such as Sergei Eisentstein, Dziga Vertov and Vsevelod Pudovkin – who have inspired filmmakers ever since the silent era with their boundary-breaking camera techniques and editing styles, alongside narratives dealing with equality and justice that challenged censorship laws. Alongside them will be less familiar, but as vital filmmakers such as Kozintsev and Trauberg, best known for their ‘Maxim’ Trilogy. June will follow with the advent of ‘talkies’ up to post-War Soviet cinema, and will include titles released on DVD, education initiatives and special events, before KOSMOS, the two month Russian Sci-Fi season, begins in July.