Valentine’s Day at BFI Southbank

BFI Southbank is serving up the perfect Valentine’s Day date night selection of films on Friday 14 February. Grab some drinks from the bar and settle in with your love to enjoy one of these fantastically romantic features.

The Apartment
At 2:30pm 
Jack Lemmon plays lonely office clerk CC Baxter, who lends his apartment to his bosses for their extramarital affairs. That is, until he realises Fran Kubelik, who operates the lift in his company’s building and with whom CC has fallen in love, is involved in the arrangement... Partially inspired by Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, Billy Wilder’s iconic film is equally a moving tale about solitude and a sparkling, perfectly delightful comedy.

Picnic at Hanging Rock
At 6pm
Weir’s wonderfully enigmatic film, is possessed of a ghostly, foreboding atmosphere and has become a landmark film for its dreamlike exploration of the intensely romantic, yet profoundly unsettling, experience of girlhood and burgeoning sexuality.  On Valentine’s Day 1900, students from Appleyard College, a girls’ private school in Victoria, Australia, embark on a field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. It’s not until the end of the day that the group realise that some of their party have mysteriously disappeared...

My Beautiful Laundrette
At 6:10pm
Hanif Kureishi’s Oscar®-nominated screenplay crackles with wit and warmth in the face of racial tensions and homophobia and remains one of the most celebrated takedowns of Thatcher’s Britain. Omar, a young British Pakistani man, takes over the running of a dilapidated laundrette with former flame Johnny, and their affair resumes in the face of family pressures and cultural conflict.

Love and Basketball
At 8:30pm
Prince-Bythewood’s feature directorial debut follows the parallel careers of childhood friends as they navigate very different paths toward stardom. A celebration of women’s athleticism and drenched in the female gaze, this disruption of the sports-movie canon has earned a cult following.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) 
At 8:35pm
Céline Sciamma’s period romantic drama is the perfect combination of sensuality, feminism and restraint. In the late 18th-century, a noted female artist arrives on a remote island to paint a portrait of a soon-to-be-married young woman. As the two spend time together, an intense romance ensues.

Twilight Saga Trilogy All-Nighter
Sat 15 Feb from 11pm at BFI IMAX
Valentines Weekend Vampires are invited for an all-night trilogy of Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse, charting the love affair between quiet teenager Bella Swan and the gorgeous, brooding Edward Cullen.