James R | On 27, Aug 2016

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 This Filthy Earth.

The uncompromising invention of Andrew Kötting and his rural drama is praised by Mark as a eulogy to the filmmaker’s “epic and untameable” talent.

What else is available to stream? Every week, we bring you a round-up of the latest titles on BFI Player+:

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

A widowed Ginza hostess struggles to remain faithful to the memory of her husband, despite constant pressure to comprise her honour. Mikio Naruse’s most famous film is a classic example of post-war Japanese cinema.

24 City

Documentarian Jia Zhangke combines reminiscence and performance in this study of a Chinese military factory that has been turned into a shopping mall.

Wild and the Willing

It’s hard to remember a time before Ian McShane, but here he is in his big screen debut, starring in Ralph Thomas’ 1962 drama about a group of students in the swinging 60s – and one, in particular, who begins an affair with a professor’s wife. Guess who plays him.

The Man Who Changed His Mind

Boris Karloff stars in this 1936 film as a scientist who has devised a way to put one person’s mind into another’s body – something that he inevitably plans to use for murderous intent. But the real star, perhaps, is director Robert Stevenson, who used this film as a calling card to help him follow Hitchcock to Hollywood.

 

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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