Features and reviews
Discover the latest from the BFI, the UK’s lead organisation for film, television and the moving image.
John Smith in the time of Covid: “I wanted to capture the melancholy of watching people through their windows”
With two new short film projects, Citadel and Covid Messages, the veteran British artist filmmaker has been busy during the pandemic – indeed, because of it.
By Ian Christie
The man in the cryogenic freezer: an interview with John Carpenter
By Tom Milne and Richard Combs
“You’ve got to pick what you think is important in this world and make sure it survives”: Richard Linklater on sharing the gospel of cinema
“You’ve got to pick what you think is important in this world and make sure it survives”: Richard Linklater on sharing the gospel of cinema“The theatre experience transcends all the lines that separate us”: Regina King on her dream palaces
By Regina King
“I’ve tried to remember I need to be having fun”: Don Hertzfeldt on World of Tomorrow
By Nick Bradshaw
“If there was a song Spike Lee loved, we’d see him pop up in the aisle”: David Byrne on his concert doc American Utopia
By Leonie Cooper
“Viva cinema!”: Luca Guadagnino immerses himself in electric shadows
By Luca Guadagnino
Jean-Luc Godard in the USA
By Claire Clouzot
“Cinema is an oneiric medium and the cinema hall transposes you there”: Chaitanya Tamhane on his dream palaces
“Cinema is an oneiric medium and the cinema hall transposes you there”: Chaitanya Tamhane on his dream palaces“People need to know this”: County Lines and the teenage trauma of drug running
By Isabel Stevens
“The manifesto was: let’s trust our heritage, our talent and each other”: Shabier Kirchner on shooting Small Axe
By Aaron E. Hunt
Lynne Ramsay on the magic behind the velvet curtain
Lynne Ramsay on the magic behind the velvet curtainFrom Come and See to William Eggleston: 7 visual influences on County Lines
By Leigh Singer
Kleber Mendonça Filho on Recife’s Cinema São Luiz, his hometown picture palace
By Kleber Mendonça Filho
I can remember it for you wholesale: The making of Total Recall, 30 years on
By Josh Slater-Williams
“Incompetence was killing the victims”: Alexander Nanau on his health-service exposé Collective
By Nick Bradshaw
“Cinema is my happy place”: Francis Lee celebrates cinemas as community spaces
By Francis Lee
Christian Petzold on discovering The Deer Hunter one wintry night in Berlin
By Christian Petzold
Cate Shortland on escaping suburbia in Australia’s arthouse cinemas
By Cate Shortland
“These are the untold stories that make up our nation”: Steve McQueen on Small Axe
By David Olusoga
“In my pictures you can’t hide”: Roy Andersson on humour and truth
By James Mottram
“Colonialism is the ultimate cancel culture” – Femi Nylander and Rob Lemkin on their Heart of Darkness riff African Apocalypse
By Kaleem Aftab
“There’s heartbreak in someone losing themselves”: Relic director Natalie Erika James on her love of gothic and Asian horror
By James Bell
Chicken director Alana Hicks: “The industry is shifting radically. People are being held accountable for their bias”
By Whelan Barzey
“It was like a fever dream”: Tamar-kali on writing the score for Shirley
By Frances Morgan
“I was made for horror”: Barbara Steele is an angel for Satan
By David Cairns and Daniel Riccuito
“The political will is still not there”: Ken Fero on his potent police brutality documentary Ultraviolence
By Flora Spencer Grant
“I like cinema that cracks open your sense of the world”: Remi Weekes on His House
By Leila Latif
“In the end you can’t help but make stuff in a postmodern way”: Ben Wheatley on re-filming Rebecca
By Christina Newland