Jacob Heayes

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Michael Brooke |Adam Nayman |Jacob Heayes

Jacques Rivette’s 1971 film Out 1 (co-directed by Suzanne Schiffman) has played the longest of long games. It’s not only that it lasts 13 hours – always the first thing anybody mentions about it – or that, by comparison with his prolific nouvelle vague contemporaries, Rivette took a long time to get to this fourth feature (Godard and Chabrol had each signed more than 20 by 1971).

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Michael Brooke |Adam Nayman |Jacob Heayes |Chloe Walker

Although Wojciech Jerzy Has (1925 to 2000) made 14 features, you’d never know it from what made it into British commercial distribution – just three theatrically (How to Be Loved, The Saragossa Manuscript, The Doll), and two subsequently on video (Saragossa, The Hourglass Sanatorium). Until the recent release of an expensive Blu-ray box set, distribution was similarly patchy in his native Poland, with only the French making comprehensive efforts at keeping the Has flame burning after his death.

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Jacob Heayes |Chloe Walker |Brogan Morris

Heavy Rain’s emergence into the light of day didn’t contain a shred of gameplay. In fact, the scene depicted in its initial teaser is nowhere to be found in the final version. French game designer Quantic Dream chose to unveil its debut title for Sony’s PlayStation 3 with a casting call for a fictional film; one that just so happens to also be called Heavy Rain. Their cinematic aspirations shouldn’t have necessarily come as a surprise.

Nov 26, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Adam Scovell |Lisa Kerrigan |Kevin Lyons |Jacob Heayes

Part of a golden age of (often landscape-infused) adventure tales published for younger readers, Richard Adams’ 1972 novel Watership Down defined many a 1970s childhood in Britain. But Martin Rosen’s subsequent film adaptation of it in 1978 arguably terrified the same generation as much as it thrilled it, with a notoriously dark, occasionally violent, saga realised through innovative animation.

Nov 21, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Lisa Kerrigan |Charles Fairall |Kevin Lyons |Jacob Heayes

Our Mediatheque at BFI Southbank provides access to the digital collections of the BFI National Archive, enabling viewers to travel back in time to other televisual eras. 21 November 2024In 1996 the United Nations declared 21 November as World TV Day in recognition of the influence of the medium, and the power it had in global communications.