David Farnor | On 11, May 2020

BFI Player, the BFI’s streaming platform, is a gateway to global film, offering a collection of arthouse and world cinema to subscribers, alongside its pay-per-view rental releases and free archive titles and silent movie shorts. This month, it shifts its focus to Japan, with a major season originally planned for BFI Southbank spanning a wealth of the country’s finest filmmakers – starting with Akira Kurosawa. For more information and a full BFI Japan schedule, click here.

Here’s what’s coming to BFI Player’s subscription service this month:

Mother (2009) – Available now

Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature film is a gripping study of the limits of maternal devotion. The film follows a widow (Kim Hye-ja) raising her mentally challenged son (Won Bin) in a small South Korean town, who finds her world plunged into nightmare, when a young girl is found murdered and her son the prime suspect. Betrayed by the legal system, the mother takes the law into her own hands to clear his name.

BFI Japan: Kurosawa – 11th May

A major new season from the BFI launches on BFI Player with a collection of 22 films by master director Akira Kurosawa, the first Japanese filmmaker to achieve an international reputation, whose influence on global cinema, from Westerns to Star Wars cannot be overstated. The films included are:

Seven Samurai (1954)
Throne Of Blood (1957)
Yojimbo (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
Rashomon (1950)
The Men Who Tread On The Tiger’s Tail (1945)
Drunken Angel (1948)
Stray Dog (1949)
Ikiru (1952)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Red Beard (1965)
Ran (1985)
Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
Sanshiro Sugata Part Two (1945)
The Most Beautiful (1944)
No Regrets For Our Youth (1946)
One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
I Live In Fear (1955)
The Lower Depths (1957)
High And Low (1963)
Dodes’ka-den (1970)

BFI Japan: Classics – 11th May

An essential introduction to great works of 20th Century Japanese cinema., with more to be added at a later date:

Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse, 1954)
Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
When A Woman Ascends The Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)
Onibaba (Kaneto Shindô, 1964)
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Hana-bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)
Black Rain (Shohei Imamura, 1989)
Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
Woman Of The Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
After Life (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998)
Youth Of The Beast (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)
Gate Of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Cruel Story Of Youth (Nagisa Ôshima, 1960)

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema: Part 1 – 18th May

Written and directed by Mark Cousins, this five-part, 14-hour documentary uses hundreds of clips from films directed by women to show how movies are made, presented in thematic chapters. Narrators include Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Debra Winger and Thandie Newton. Part 1 includes chapters on how to open a film, setting the tone, believability, introducing characters, the “meet cute”, how to make conversation cinematic, framing and the use of tracking shots.

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema: Part 2 – 25th May

Mark Cousins’ documentary continues with chapters on scene staging, journeys in film, how discovery and revelation shape some of cinema’s most iconic moments, children in film, editing and close-ups.

The Third Man – 25th May

This timeless classic, one of the greatest British films, lavishly marries a perfect script, an unforgettable theme tune and the star power of Orson Welles.

 

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