Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's visually accomplished and intellectually rigorous Riddles of the Sphinx is one of the most important avant-garde films to have emerged from Britain during the 1970s.

The second collaboration between Mulvey and Wollen, both of whom are recognised as seminal figures in the field of film theory, Riddles of the Sphinx explores issues of female representation, the place of motherhood within society and the relationship between mother and daughter. Composed of a number of discrete sections, many of which are shot as continuous circular pans, the film takes place in a range of domestic and public spaces, shot in locations which include Malcolm LeGrice's kitchen and Stephen Dwoskin's bedroom.

Ben Rivers: Shorts
Saturday August 4th, 16:10h
Sunday August 5th, 2012 18:40h
Thursday August 9th, 2012 18:40h
BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XT

This new LUX touring programme brings together five early shorts by Ben Rivers - The Coming Race; This Is My Land; A World Rattled of Habit; Origin of the Species, Ah, Liberty - which together present a series of portraits of unconventional lives - of people existing, to varying degrees, in wilderness or isolation. River's films are compassionate and elliptical, ambigious documents of both the reality of life outside urban norms and our own Romantic preconceptions of a life beyond bounds. The programme includes This Is My Land, Rivers' first portrait of Jake Williams, later the subject of Two Years at Sea.

Two decades before the Big Brother phenomenon overtook the world's television screens filmmaker Steve Dwoskin made this film depicting the events that ensued when a group of random people were isolated within the confines one house. Dwoskin was in there t

A collection of cult films by experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Includes: FIREWORKS (1947), PUCE MOMENT (1949), RABBIT'S MOON (1950), EAUX D'ARTIFICE (1953), THE INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954), SCORPIO RISING (1963), KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (19

Jeff Keen began making films at the age of 37 when his art school film society needed things to show. And so began over forty years of unique, imaginative, irrepressible filmmaking. This release contains over 9 hours of films and videos by the visionary f

The fourth volume in the BFI's British Artists' Films series - produced in partnership with arts documentary makers Illuminations and Arts Council England - features Jayne Parker, an artist who makes moving images for cinema, gallery and television.

Before David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau - there was Jean Painlevé. Poetic pioneer of science films, Painlevé explored a twilight realm of vampire bats, seahorses, octopi, and liquid crystals. In collaboration with his life-partner, Genevive Hamon,

Finnish filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila's films and multi-screen installations explore and experiment with storytelling, creating extraordinary tales out of ordinary human experiences and particularly the unsettling human dramas at the centre of personal rel

Since the 1950s, Geoffrey R. Llewellyn Jones has been making multi-award-winning short films that look, sound and feel like nothing else. With his extraordinary marriage of images, music and rhythm, he ranks alongside such luminaries as Norman McLaren and

Berlin-born Hans Richter - Dadaist, painter, film theorist and filmmaker - was for four decades one of the most influential members of the cinematic avant-garde. Richter assembled some of the century's liveliest artists as co-creators of Dreams That Mon