“Let me tell you a story and you tell me, is it material for a comedy or a tragedy?”

The starting point for Melinda and Melinda is the opening for every Woody Allen movie. As a director who finds comedy in the depressing and futile meaningless of life, Allen’s best work features comedy that stems from serious drama. Hannah and Her Sisters. The Purple Rose of Cairo. Husbands and Wives. Manhattan.

That duality is something that Allen openly confronts in binary titles. Crimes and Misdemeanors. Melinda and Melinda. Even Love and Death highlights the contrast between the silliness of farce and the philosophy of Chekhov. It’s when the director steps away from this balance that he starts to falter - see the Bergman-inspired Interiors, or the melodramatic Match Point, which expands one half of Crimes and Misdemeanours into a full feature-length narrative.

And so, as the BFI Woody Allen season continues, here are some thoughts on two of Woody’s most explicitly binary movies.

"I just met a wonderful new man. He's fictional but you can't have everything."

There's something about the surreal tone of Woody Allen, that intelligent silliness, that often reminds me of Monty Python. But unlike Python, Woody's neurotic humour stems from the inherently bleak, futile crappiness of human existence. And, of course, most of the grief (as well as the good bits) come from relationships.

Indeed, for the most part, it isn't a Woody Allen film if two married couples aren't both having affairs - usually with each other. So, to continue this blog-along series with the BFI Woody Allen season, here are some thoughts on two films with particularly tempestuous relationships.

If you've seen the opening credits for a Woody Allen film, you'll have noticed two things: the Windsor font and the music.

So, as the BFI Woody Allen season ventures into the 1990s, we look at two of the director's most musical numbers: Everyone Says I Love You and Sweet and Lowdown.

Last week, David Cameron said some silly things about the British film industry and how it should try to fund "commercially successful pictures" (because we all know that Tyrannosaur was missing real dinosaurs to make it better).

The comments came in advance of the government's film policy review this week, but while it's ridiculous to think that anyone can predict what will be a commercial success (look at Four Lions...) and whether it will be any good for the industry (...and then look at Sex Lives of the Potato Men), other funding news was announced on Thursday about another vital part of the country's movie industry: short films.

With the UK Film Council abolished, the BFI is holding the purse strings for UK filmmakers, and they've opted to bring in Lighthouse to manage the funding of short films.

Now Lighthouse, the Brighton-based arts organisation, is already involved in Guiding Lights, the UK scheme to support emerging film talent. They were also responsible for commissioning two short films that were nominated for major awards last year - Turning was up for a BAFTA and Wish 143 was an Oscar contender. In short, they know their stuff.

As the Woody Allen BFI season continues this month, it seems apt to start this second look back at the director’s back catalogue with the letter B: Bananas, Broadway Danny Rose and Bullets Over Broadway.

Bananas (1971)

Regarded as “one of his early, funny ones”, Bananas begins with a crowd stampeding a government office after El Presidente is assassinated. Amid the hordes of protestors, an American news reporter fights his way through the crowd with a wired microphone in hand.

It’s a chaotic opening scene and that confusion never lets up over a haphazard 80 minutes, but Bananas establishes a plot structure that Allen has returned to over the years: an unwitting, neurotic male chases after a female, only to get involved with a bunch of shady individuals – in this case, a group of rebels in the fictional dictatorship of San Marcos.

If you spotted Midnight in Paris in my Top 11 Films of 2011 or spoken to me at any length about film, you'll be aware that I'm a massive Woody Allen fan. I get that a lot of people aren't, especially after Match Point, but if you're only familiar with his Scarlett Johansson years, then I can't recommend the BFI's current season enough.

Tying in with the official re-release of Hannah and Her Sisters and Zelig by the wonderful Park Circus, the good old BFI are doing a retrospective of his work called "Wise Cracks: The Comedies of Woody Allen". Between now and Wednesday 8th February, they're showing 22 of the director's films - a sizeable 46.8 per cent of his 45-year output. 

The good news? They're starting off with two of his best. The bad news? I'm going to attempt to keep up with them. I'm not going to call it BlogalongaWoody. Yet. But if you're a fellow Woody fan and you do a wee blog about the BFI series, let me know and I'll link to it.

As digital takes over from 35mm (ZOMG, I was talking about that yesterday) and film fades into the past, this online catalogue is a huge step towards preserving the UK's celluloid history - and a perfect demonstration of how modern technology can celebrate the legacy of analogue film.

You can uncover old footage, discover new videos, and find out about your film heritage. You can also use it search for bananas.

Did you know that you in 1976, someone called J.O. Barron made a 16mm colour movie for the Tropical Product Institute titled How to Market Better Bananas? Well, you do now. Isn't learning fun?

Solely in terms of banana education, Screen Archive UK is amazing. It's timely, fascinating, and exactly the kind of thing the BFI should be doing.  

For a taste of what can be done with the stupidly large archive, read on for some videos made from the footage. One's called Holiday, one's called Customs and the other is titled Dance. Sadly none of them involve bananas.

With the BFI's season of Spanish cinema after Franco in full swing, it was only a matter of time before Pedro Almodóvar turned his hand to religion. 

Released in 1984, Dark Habits is Almodóvar's third film and - if the puntastic title wasn't a big enough clue - it's about nuns. An unconventional comedy about a group of subversive sisters? It's perfect for Pedro, a firm believer in Luis Buñuel's anti-religious commentary, but Dark Habits is less harsh than you might expect.

Yolanda (Labyrinth of Passion's Cristina Sanchez Pascual) is a pop singer with a taste for hard drugs. When her boyfriend overdoses, the cops come looking for her. So she pulls a Whoopi Goldberg and hides out in a convent. But this is far from Sister Act, brother. These are some seriously whacked out nuns.

Yes, even more rock and roll than Maggie Smith.

The BFI's Spanish season (Good Morning Freedom! Spanish Cinema After Franco) jumps forward to the late 1980s with Fernando Colomo's Going Down in Morocco - one of the season's post-Franco Spanish movies that isn't by Pedro Almodóvar.

A woman steps off a ferry on her way back from Morocco. She is glamourous, decked out in a colourful dress and hat. She stops, checks her bosom is amply positioned, and strolls onto shore. Then the police turn up and she runs for the nearest toilet to remove the drugs she's got stashed between her legs.

That's the life of an indie dealer in 1980s Spain, if you believe Going Down in Morocco (Bajarse en Moro). And there's every reason to do so. People line the streets of Madrid selling Iron Maiden cassette tapes and U2 key rings (alongside clean syringes) and they joke about the upcoming 1992 Olympics - it's all very much a product of its time.

With a similar feel to Almodóvar's output of the period, Bajarse en Moro is a knockabout urban comedy that consolidated the Comedia Madrileña genre. With Franco gone for over a decade, young directors in Madrid had a host of energetic actors, a wealth of social changes to consider and the freedom to capture it all on video. It was only natural for them to look at the situations facing society's youth through humour. And drugs. Mostly at the same time.

Anyway, back to the woman with hash up her fanny.

The BFI's Spanish season (Good Morning Freedom! Spanish Cinema After Franco) continues this weekend with another Pedro Almodóvar movie – a reminder of his significance in the movement of Spanish cinema after Franco.

Almodóvar's fourth film, What Have I Done to Deserve This? (or ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?) sees a shift away from his earlier madcap moviemaking towards the dark domestic comedy of his later work. Following put-upon housewife Gloria as she struggles to keep the family (and herself) together, it’s partly a critique of society's patriarchal structures that were at their height under Franco.

Trying to make ends meet, Gloria befriends her neighbour, a prostitute called Cristal. “I don’t want you hanging around her,” demands Gloria’s unfaithful husband, “she’s a whore!” Gloria looks bluntly at him. “So what?”

It’s this defiant portrayal of females that typifies Almodóvar’s work, something that his muse Carmen Maura always portrays well in the lead. Refusing to be trodden down, the film starts off with her doing a light spot of ninja training with a giant stick. Which, naturally, leads to some full-on shower sex.