BFI - Modern Classics - A Brief History

From the old U.C. Press website

As part of the BFI's commitment to the promotion and evaluation of contemporary cinema, and in conjunction with the influential BFI Film Classics series, BFI Modern Classics is a series of books devoted to individual films of recent years. In these succinct and beautifully illustrated paperbacks, distinguished film critics, scholars, and novelists explore the production and reception of their chosen films in the context of an argument about the film's importance.

How are the films chosen?

The policy here is much more fluid, though again a sense of balance and range is crucial. The series is aimed to some extent at a 'cult film' audience, so there are a lot of books on well-known American movies with a known following among fans (The Exorcist or Blade Runner). There are also books on art cinema from around the world (Pasolini's Salò or Bresson's L'Argent) and in 2002 we published books on the Taiwanese masterpiece City of Sadness as well as two Indian films, one a mass-market blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the other an acclaimed study of social and religious tension, Mother India. So the series is broad and varied. It's also occasionally 'experimental'. We have published a number of books on films that were only a couple of years old when the book came out. The point of this strand of the series is to throw the category of 'classic' up into the air - to provoke debate and argument.


List of Titles

No new titles since 2006

The Modern Classic Series seems to have been absorbed into the Film Classic Series.

2006
Distant Voices, Still Lives

2005
Bombay
10

2004
Groundhog Day
Nosferatu
The Matrix
The Thin Red Line
Unforgiven
Withnail and I

2003
The Shawshank Redemption
Amores Perros
The Exorcist 2ed (Revised)
The Idiots
LA Confidential

2002
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
City of Saddness
Jaws
Heat
Eyes Wide Shut
The Silence of the Lambs
Trainspotting

2001
The Usual Suspects
Do the Right Thing
Pulp Fiction
Thelma and Louise

2000
Dead Man
Salo 120 Days of Sodom

1999
L'Argent
Titanic
The Wings of the Doves
Se7en
WR - Mysteries of the Organism
Caravaggio
Crash

1998
The Exorcist 2ed
Independence Day
Last Tango in Paris

1997
Once Upon a Time in America
The " Three Colours" Trilogy
Blue Velvet
Blade Runner
The Crying Game
The Exorcist 1ed
The Right Stuff
The Thing

1996
Easy Rider
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Don't Look Now
The Terminator