VOD News | On 22, Jul 2017

Heard of BFI Player? Well, there’s also BFI Player+, a subscription service that offers an all-you-can-eat selection of hand-picked classics.

Every Friday, Mark Kermode highlights one of the collection’s titles with a video introduction. This week, it’s 1961’s Victim. Basil Dearden’s thought-provoking drama stars Dirk Bogarde as a homosexual lawyer who risks his career to hunt down a blackmailer. Mark celebrates the ground-breaking film as a campaigning classic that changed the way homosexuality was depicted in British cinema.

What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week:

Edith Walks

Shot with Super 8 iPhone apps, featuring Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting’s latest experimental documentary is inspired by a walk from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex – a pilgrimage carried out in memory of Edith Swan Neck.

Forgotten the Queen

This short animation intended to accompany Andrew Kötting’s feature-length Edith Walks explores the same themes around the life of Medieval queen Edith Swan Neck.

A Portrait of Eden

A week in the life of 22-year-old Eden Kötting, who has Joubert’s Syndrome. A moving, tender film by Gideon Koppel (Sleep Furiously).

Swandown

Filmmaker Andrew Kötting and writer Iain Sinclair embark on a quest from Hastings to East London by pedalo.

Sixth Happiness

Funny, acerbic and moving story of a young man’s sexual awakening as family life crumbles around him.

The Fruit Machine

Berated by his father for his camp behaviour, Eddie runs away from his Liverpool home and joins his friend Michael, a streetwise hustler who is also on the run.

Pasolini

Pasolini packs an awful lot into its surprisingly brisk 84 minutes. Wisely eschewing the trappings of your normal biopic, this instead shows us the last day or so of Pasolini’s life, as he gears up for the release of Salo, takes in an interview that challenges his worldview and starts plotting his next film, and finally, the grisly, unfortunate events that lead up to his death. That this is all mixed with occasional flashbacks and scenes playing out in Pasolini’s mind (we see the inner visuals that go with his storytelling) should be a recipe for disaster, but Abel Ferrara somehow pulls it off. Read our full review.

 

A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.
 

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