Programme highlights announced for April 2025 at BFI

The programme for April 2025 at BFI Southbank, starts with Myriad Voices: Reframing Taiwan New Cinema, curated by BFI London Film Festival programmer Hyun Jin Cho and presented in partnership with Taiwan Film and the Audiovisual Institute and Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.

This innovative film movement was grounded in a collective spirit of creativity, playfulness, and humility. Yet, while auteurs like Edward Yang (Taipei Story, The Terrorisers) and Hou Hsiao-Hsien (A City of Sadness, The Sandwich Man) are internationally recognised, many pivotal figures remain lesser known. This season hopes to paint a fuller picture of this vibrant film movement and shift the spotlight towards lesser known but vital contributors, whose work helped shape this new cinematic expression, with around half of the features never having screened in UK cinemas before. Several films in the season, such as My Favourite Season (Chen Kun-Hou, 1985) and This Love of Mine (Chang Yi, 1986), draw on feminist writing, centring women’s lives in a transitional space where tradition and aspiration collide. Boldly confronting both artistic and political challenges, Taiwan New Cinema continues to resonate within the world of cinema today.

A highlight of the season will be the Taiwan New Cinema Symposium on 12 April, which will feature a series of engaging talks and discussions that offer deeper insights and new interpretations of the movement, industry practices of the 1980s, feminist perspectives and the complexities of Taiwanese identities. Special guests at the symposium will include renowned filmmaker and founder of the Women Make Waves International Film Festival, Huang Yu-shan, whose narrative feature debut, Autumn Tempest (1988), features in the season….