Burt Lancaster, Part two

The 1960s was a period of transition in Hollywood, and no star was better positioned than Burt Lancaster to enjoy the increasing creative freedom of those changing times. As an ambitious actor and a maverick independent producer, Lancaster had long challenged the studio system’s general aversion to controversy, realism and the downbeat.

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Screwball Women: Comediennes in Classical Hollywood

The contribution of directors such as Capra and Cukor to Hollywood comedy is undisputed, but their leading ladies deserve more attention. This BFI Southbank season features some of the most brilliant comediennes ever to light up the screen, including the ever sophisticated Claudette Colbert, smouldering Carole Lombard and the ‘glacial goddess’, Katharine Hepburn.

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Clowning Glories: Women in Film Comedy before 1930

Women were highly active as directors during cinema’s first decades, but few comedies directed by women from this period survive today. However, a strong selection of titles are still available for this retrospective, showcasing work from Florence Turner and Hollywood’s most successful female director, Dorothy Arzner.

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Birds Eye View Film Festival joins forces with the BFI to present two retrospective programmes, Clowning Glories and Screwball Women, honouring the women whose comic brilliance lit up the screen from the earliest days of cinema to Hollywood’s golden era.

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Twilight and Treachery: The Postwar European Film Noir

What exactly is film noir? To coincide with the BFI release of Bertolucci’s The Conformist, BFI Southbank presents a thought-provoking season to address this question throughout March.

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