The BFI has announced its programme highlights for April, including boxing, Peter Weir, and ‘Trash Cinema’ seasons.
The programme for BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX from 30 March to 30 April begins with the previously announced ‘The Cinematic Life of Boxing’, a season of films that “capture the essence of a sport that has been as influential on generations of athletes and fans as it has on cinema itself”.
Meanwhile, ‘Finding Your Way: The Films of Peter Weir’ will celebrate the timeless work of one of cinema’s “most humane auteurs”.
“Wildly different in scale and genre, the films of Peter Weir are united by more than immaculate craftsmanship,” the BFI said.
“If many are beloved classics, it is because his cinema is attuned to the feelings of characters reckoning with what we all must eventually face: the unknown.
“Whether warring at sea, encountering unfamiliar cultures, or simply waking to the power of poetry for the first time, Weir’s protagonists are spurred to action by overwhelming emotions.”
Events in the season will include a discussion about Weir as an Australian director with season curator Elena Lazic, academic Dr Stephen Morgan and film critic Tim Robey on 9 April, following a screening of The Plumber (1979).
Further films playing throughout April will include a new 35mm print of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), made by the BFI with funding from the National Lottery, along with 35mm screenings of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Fearless (1993), plus The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), The Last Wave (1977), Gallipoli (1981), Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Green Card (1990), The Truman Show (1998), The Way Back (2010), and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), which will also play on the UK’s largest screen at BFI IMAX on 19 April.
Meanwhile, ‘Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen’ will explore films that delight in low budgets and so-called ‘bad taste’.
“They are lurid, camp, transgressive, wild and DIY, made by friends and lovers who subvert received ideas about gender, sex and identity,” the BFI explained.
“Their history goes back to the carny sideshows of yore, breaking the fourth wall and revelling in audiences’ complicit inclusion in both the shocks and jokes.
“Shown at cheap drive-ins, alternative art spaces and midnight movie palaces, these queer, divine, eye-popping works challenge the limits of censorship whilst blurring the boundaries between art and exploitation, parody and homage, excess and play.”
Elsewhere, marking the arrival of his new, stylised documentary Kinaesthesia (2025), which traces the history of dreams in silent cinema, director Gerald Fox has programmed a selection of essential films on this theme.
An exploration of the relationship between film and dreams, Kinaesthesia (the sensation of movement) is a lyrical documentary inspired by the film historian Vlada Petrić, which draws on an extensive archive to offer a journey through the history of dreams in early cinema.
The BFI previews the film on 17 and 19 April followed by Q&As with Fox. The director will return on 19 April to introduce a screening of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926), as well as a Silent Dreams Shorts Programme, with other films playing in the month set to include A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926) and The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928).
Film previews at BFI Southbank this month will include the BFI Distribution release Rose of Nevada (2025) on 23 April, including a Q&A with director Mark Jenkin and cast (TBC).
As part of this month’s Big Screen Classics programme, selected by Jenkin, the BFI also welcomes Mike Figgis for an In Conversation event on 28 April.
“One of the filmmaking world’s nonconformists, Figgis employs radical ideas about form and technique in his process,” organisers said.
“He made Timecode (2000), which we also play on 28 April with an introduction, in four continuous 98-minute takes played together on a screen divided into quarters.” Jenkin and Figgis will discuss the film and his rich, eclectic and acclaimed career.
The full programme for April is available on the BFI website.
