Alain Robbe-Grillet

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Jessica Kiang Talkies |Jessica Kiang |Joanna Abeyie |Alain Robbe-Grillet

“Allow me to grow,” said Richard Pryor to the magazine Ebony in 1980, defending his decision to swear off using a certain racial slur in his comedy. His turning point had come the year before, during a trip to Kenya. Sitting in a Nairobi hotel, he’d had an epiphany, realising that such loaded terms, even when self-administered, and even when they’d become a cornerstone of his success, were “a trick, like genocide on the brain”.

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Jessica Kiang Talkies |Jessica Kiang |Joanna Abeyie |Alain Robbe-Grillet

“Nobody loses all the time,” spits Benny (Warren Oates) in Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, before going on to prove incontrovertibly that some people do. By the time Peckinpah’s magnificently fucked-up road movie premiered in August 1974, American motorists on the real-life road also knew how it felt to be on a losing streak. Since the previous October when Arab oil exports to the US had been embargoed, a chain reaction had occurred.

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Joanna Abeyie |Alain Robbe-Grillet |Richard Roud |Lizzie Francke

Has 2024 seen the industry backtrack woefully on diversity? Dr Joanna Abeyie, MBE, former head of creative diversity at the BBC, offers sobering reflections on the current terrain. 22 August 2024African American actor, producer and showrunner Issa Rae’s thoughts on the ever-changing television and film landscape in a recent interview with Porter magazine provoked my own personal reflections on representation, accountability and fairness in the UK TV and film industry.

Aug 22, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Alain Robbe-Grillet |Richard Roud |Lizzie Francke |Queline Meadows

In our Autumn 1961 issue, the French writer and filmmaker recalled his near-telepathic collaboration with Alain Resnais on Late Year at Marienbad. 22 August 2024Alain Resnais and I have often been asked just how we worked together during the conception, writing and making of Last Year at Marienbad. And if I try to answer this question I may also throw a little light on our attitude to expression in the cinema.