Lizzie Francke

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.

Aug 17, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Richard Roud |Lizzie Francke |Queline Meadows |Sophia Satchell-Baeza

No critic in his right mind would ever presume to review films as complex as Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar or Godard’s Masculin Féminin on the basis of single viewings. Which is all I have had. Charitably assuming I am no more foolhardy than the next man, what, then, is the point of the present article? As the mumbo-jumbo mathematics of the title seeks to indicate, these are more in the nature of previews, and only secondarily-and tentatively-reviews. Not so much a conclusion, more a prolegomena.

Jul 4, 2024 | bfi.org.uk | Richard G. Combs |Richard Roud |Lizzie Francke |Queline Meadows

Ships that pass in the night. John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), about a strip-club entrepreneur in debt to the Mob, was apparently dreamt up in the course of an evening with Martin Scorsese.

Oct 25, 2023 | bfi.org.uk | Adam Scovell |Richard Roud |Lizzie Francke |Queline Meadows

Writer-producer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were one of the most successful and imaginative creative pairings in British film history. Their beautiful, eccentric and often mystical films managed to be distinctly British while also leaning towards the otherworldly. The results ranged from uncanny dramas such as I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) and Black Narcissus (1947) to more overtly fantastical films such as A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948).