Cinema is, by nature, melodramatic.
Beautiful people perform impossible stories, hearts on sleeves as they dance through an artificial world. In a passionate purge of emotion, melodrama employs exaggerated staging, score and performance to create the ultimate spectacle. The stories it tells are intimate and familial, but stakes are high, and characters rarely behave rationally. They are human, after all.
Despite (or because of) its popularity, melodrama has repeatedly been dismissed by critics. They find sincerity confronting, a lack of restraint distasteful. As women through the ages have been told: it’s not right to be so hysterical.
The rare cinematic form concerned with women’s inner lives, these films span infidelity, motherhood and exploitation to capture our hearts and evoke our empathy. The legacy of early ‘women’s pictures’, created for female audiences with their favourite female stars, echoes across generations and around the world. As in life, these women do not always triumph. Imperfectly feminist yet endlessly relatable, their sensationalist struggles carry searing social commentary beneath their glossy veneer.
In the coming months we will embrace the vivid visual language and heightened dramatics of melodrama, inviting you to leave your cynicism at the door and feel something.
Don’t forget your tissues.
UK wide listings
- The BFI Southbank programme for October and November is now live. Explore the full season.
October
From 1 October
The New Black Film Collective (multiple locations)
4 October
Queen’s Film Theatre
Screams By The Sea (Cottonwood Hotel)
From 5 October
Derby QUAD
Glasgow Film Theatre
International Film Festival Glasgow (IFFG), Grosvenor Picture Theatre, Glasgow
From 7 October
Malvern Theatres
Torch Theatre, Pembrokeshire
From 8 October
Exeter Phoenix, Exeter
From 9 October
The Poly
Riverside Studios
From 10 October
The Palace Cinema, Broadstairs
From 11 October
ActOne Cinema
From 12 October
The Hippodrome, Bo’ness
From 13 October
Theatreship, London
From 15 October
Showroom Cinema
From 16 October
Invisible Women present Stronger Than Love: ¡Too Much Mexican Melodrama! (multiple locations)
Strand Arts Centre, Belfast
From 18 October
ActOne Cinema
Film Tottenham at The Beehive
From 19 October
Purbeck Film Festival
The Riverside Cinema and A Listers Restaurant
From 23 October
Bridport Arts Centre
Strand, Belfast
From 24 October
Cambridge Film Festival
Warwick Arts Centre
From 27 October
The Depot, Lewes
From 30 October
Flatpack Festival, Birmingham
November
From 1 November
Electric Palace Cinema
From 2 November
The Ultimate Picture Palace
Storyhouse, Chester
From 4 November
Broadway, Nottingham
From 7 November
Darkened Rooms at Insole Court, Cardiff
From 10 November
Crip Melodrama (multiple locations)
From 15 November
South West Silents: Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson double bills, Bristol Megascreen
From 16 November
Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Falmer, Brighton
From 19 November
Foyle Film Festival / Nerve Centre
From 22 November
Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds
From 29 November
Aunty Social/Blackpool Film Festival — Chester, Blackpool, Preston
Cary Comes Home, Bristol – film screening: Penny Serenade (dir. George Stevens, 1941)
December
14 December
Out Freeze Frame Film Club, Out of the Blue, Edinburgh
Reel Life Monsters
January
From 23 January
London Short Film Festival
This list will be further updated when more participating venues are confirmed.