Josephine Botting

2 weeks ago | bfi.org.uk | Stuart Isaac Burnside |Anton Bitel |José Arroyo |Jose arroyo |Josephine Botting

How do you begin to discuss a video game as seminal as Pac-Man on its 45th anniversary? Pac-Man is a rare gaming beast that has managed to transcend its trappings to become something of a cultural shorthand for the medium of video games as a whole. Titles are rarely as impactful as Namco’s 1980 masterpiece, and the little circular hero shows no signs of retiring any time soon.

2 weeks ago | bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel |José Arroyo |Jose arroyo |Josephine Botting |Carmen Gray

“Eeurgh, that was horrible!” says a schoolgirl during a class on cinematic presentations of World War II, complaining about Come and See (1985), Elem Klimov’s notoriously confronting story of Belarusian Holocaust. “Well maybe it was horrible,” responds her teacher Stuart Reeves (Stuart Laing), “but war is horrible.” This exchange, coming near the beginning of Thomas Clay’s debut feature The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005), also neatly reflects the film’s initial reception.

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Stephen Dalton |Josephine Botting |Katie Granger |Henry Barnes

A gritty rags-to-riches rock musical with a strikingly sour aftertaste, Slade in Flame was a surprisingly bleak cinematic star vehicle for West Midlands glam-pop crowd-pleasers Slade. The film was a box office flop in 1975, but some critics praised its depth and sophistication. Over the last two decades, director Richard Loncraine’s debut feature has earned a growing cult reputation as an unsung classic, a potent blend of tender lyricism and bruising cynicism.

2 months ago | bfi.org.uk | Kevin Harley |Emily Maskell |Josephine Botting

Throughout his career, Toronto-born film composer Howard Shore has combined mainstream reach with the modernist rigour and range of his influences. Educated at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, his inspirations have included Toru Takemitsu, Ornette Coleman, Nino Rota and John Cage. From 1969 to 1972 he played in jazz-fusion band Lighthouse, before flexing his repertory instincts as music director for Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980.

Feb 17, 2025 | bfi.org.uk | Brogan Morris |Geoff Andrew |Josephine Botting

Explosions, lens flares and VFX galore... On his 60th birthday, explore Michael Bay's action-packed filmography to venture into an identifiable stylistic Bayhem. 17 February 2025To many critics and cinema connoisseurs in the 1990s through to the 2010s, no director represented all that was crass and ugly about Hollywood more than Michael Bay.