David Bowie retrospective at BFI Southbank confirmed for January 2022

The BFI’s month-long David Bowie retrospective, ‘Bowie: Starman and the Silver Screen’, has been confirmed for January 2022.

The season arrives at BFI Southbank twelve months on from its originally intended date, having been postponed when cinemas closed in the UK during the 2021 lockdown. It will now run from January 1 to January 30 next year; January 8 would have been Bowie’s 75th birthday.

The film line-up includes some of the rock icon’s best-loved screen turns, including Nicolas Roeg’s ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, Jim Henson’s ‘Labyrinth’, David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me’ and Uli Edel’s ‘Christiane F.’ Screenings will also encompass concert films, including Bowie’s 2000 headline performance at Glastonbury, plus documentaries and television work, as well as rare footage from the BFI archives.

Additionally, there’ll be a specific strand dedicated to movies that influenced Bowie, entitled ‘Hooked to the Silver Screen: Bowie at the Movies.’ Titles under this umbrella include Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ‘Querelle’. Adam Buxton’s ‘BUG: The Evolution of Music Video’ show will return for a pair of Bowie specials, while lecturer and author Graham Rinaldi will give a special talk on Bowie’s birthday, titled ‘David Bowie: So I Felt Like An Actor’.

Tickets are on sale now. A number of films from the programme will be available on the BFI Player in January, including ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and Nagisa Ōshima’s ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’.

In other Bowie news, his fourth album ‘Hunky Dory’ will be reissued on a special picture disc on January 7 to mark the 50th anniversary of its release, which was last Friday (December 17). It will include a new mix of the classic single ‘Changes’. Speaking about the project, the record’s original producer, Ken Scott, who oversaw the new version of ‘Changes’, said that it was “a fresh look at David’s classic.” 

“When listening to the original multi-track I discovered a few things that I had eliminated from the original mix and also a completely different sax solo at the end. It was those things that led me to try a new mix, trying for a slightly harder, more contemporary edge to it.” ‘Changes [2021 Alternative Mix]’ is already streaming online; you can watch the new video for it above, which includes never-before-seen photographs from the ‘Hunky Dory’ sessions.