The September line up on BFI Player has assembled six films for 15 September, creating the sort of cultural range that makes a sofa wonder whether it should have taken out insurance.
The programme, announced on 29 August, places Holy Cow, Human Traffic, Nightcrawler, G.B.H., Xtro and Exposé on the same day. It suggests that British culture has achieved the confidence to put cheesemaking beside extraterrestrial menace without asking either to explain itself.
Holy Cow follows a wayward French teenager who finds purpose through making Comté. Xtro concerns a man returning to his family after alien abduction with a sinister purpose. Between them lies the full distance between a practical lesson in maturity and a family reunion where everyone checks the ceiling before offering tea.
There is no need for a recommendation algorithm when the catalogue itself has developed an editorial shrug. One moment, a viewer is contemplating the spiritual properties of cheese. The next, a rural retreat has descended into violent mayhem, and the household cat is being asked to confirm its alibi.
“Cinema should transport an audience,” says Cressida, Curator of Tonal Whiplash. “Ideally from a dairy apprenticeship to an alien return visit without anyone touching the remote.”
G.B.H. adds a bouncer enlisted to fight off a mob boss, proving that even the programme’s action film arrives with a job description. Its politics concern who controls the door and why the largest man in the building has been handed a clipboard.
The connections may be thematic, historical or simply the result of six perfectly respectable films standing in the same digital corridor. Either way, the cheeseboard is now the safest thing in the house, and it has just been elected night security.
Real story: British Film Institute.
