Discoveries and Rarities

Dimensions of Švankmajer

This selection of surreal shorts from the extraordinary career of Czech filmmaker and animator Jan Švankmajer is enriched by rare, authentic film prints.

Finye

Screening in tribute to Malian director Souleymane Cissé, who died in February, his moving drama tells a story of love and the generation gap in post-colonial Mali.

Get Shorty

Mob loan shark Chili Palmer turns movie producer when he’s sent to put the squeeze on a B-picture schlockmeister in this whip-smart Elmore Leonard adaptation.

Hard to Handle

James Cagney is a ball of energy as a hustler-on-the-make in Mervyn LeRoy’s pre-Code comedy.

Harvest: 3000 Years

One of the great African films of the 1970s, Haile Gerima’s magnificent account of the inequities of neo-colonial Ethiopia combines a neo-realist approach with experimental techniques.

I Shot Andy Warhol

Lili Taylor is outstanding as Valerie Solanas, the would-be assassin of Andy Warhol, in Mary Harron’s long-unavailable feature debut.

Last Summer

An ultra-rare opportunity to see Frank and Eleanor Perry’s exploration of the power plays and casual cruelties that surface between a group of teenagers over one summer.

Little Ida

The sins of the mother weigh cruelly on an innocent little girl in occupied northern Norway towards the end of the Second World War, in Mikkelsen’s heartrending drama.

A Moment of Innocence + intro by director Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Ingeniously revisiting an incident in the director’s own life, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film is one of the key Iranian films of the 1990s.

The Outfit

Robert Duvall avenges his brother’s murder by the mob in John Flynn’s unsparingly tough inheritor of classic 1940s noir.

Night Watch

Elizabeth Taylor ventures into Grand Guignol territory in this London-set chiller about an unstable woman who may have witnessed a murder.

On Approval

Two courting couples cohabit with farcical results in this brilliantly conceived romp, the only feature that star Clive Brook ever directed.

Pirosmani

The mythical life of the great Georgian primitivist artist Niko Pirosmani is revealed in Giorgi Shengelaia’s beautifully-shot and sensitive film.

Q: The Winged Serpent

Cult-film master Larry Cohen disrupts New York’s densely packed streets with his monstrous, trashy tale of a giant flying lizard terrorising the city.

Sing-along-a Silents! Sound before the Talkies variety show

All sorts of chronophones, vivaphones, phonofilms and ornamental sounds feature in this variety pack of early sound films, made before the arrival of the talkies. Hosted by Bryony Dixon, BFI National Archive curator.