Cinema Rediscovered 2023 | Programme

Still from Variety. Photo credit: Other Parties

Previous events in this programme

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Explore alternative ways of connecting older films with a new wave of cinema goers & get inspired to broaden repertory cinema beyond the mainstream.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

The 7th edition of Cinema Rediscovered opens with a discussion inspired by Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which seized the top spot in Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time poll this year.

Hosted by Festival Founder Mark Cosgrove with guests including Managing Editor of Sight & Sound, Isabel Stevens, Invisible Women and Arike Oke, BFI’s Executive Director of Knowledge and Collections. Following the screening there will also be a special pre-recorded interview for this year’s festival with film theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Sofia Coppola’s debut feature is a melancholic, dreamy vision that marked her out as a distinctive new voice in cinema.

With an introduction by Hannah Strong, film critic, journalist and author of Sofia Coppola: Forever Young.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A new 4K restoration of the original 1953 cinema release print of Kubrick’s debut feature film which he subsequently cut following negative audience response.

With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Film on Film: A Dog Called Discord (35mm) + Meshes in The Afternoon (16mm)

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Join Tara Judah for a very special double-bill on film, starting with BAFTA-winning director Mark Jenkin's A Dog Called Discord commissioned by the BFI to mark their recent Film on Film Festival.

Introduced by a pre-recorded conversation with Mark Jenkin, hosted by Tara Judah.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Waterside 2, Watershed

Whether you’re a film lover or are aspiring to work in film writing/criticism, this session will give you insights into Sight & Sound, home to a once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time poll.

Every list, everywhere, all at once: film culture in the era of lists

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

A look at the increasingly ubiquitous role of lists in shaping and navigating the past present and future of film culture.

This session will be hosted by film critic Tara Judah with special guests including:

Arike Oke - Executive Director of Knowledge and Collections at BFI
Ella Kemp - London Editor at Letterboxd
Elena Gorfinkel - film scholar, critic and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King's College London

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Cleveland’s black community is on a knife-edge, wondering who, if anyone, can be trusted.

Join us before the film for an introduction by strand curator Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME in Manchester.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Muratova’s debut solo feature is an impressionistic dissection of a love triangle in freefall, which was banned by Soviet censors for twenty years until the advent of perestroika.

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

Opening event: Other Ways of Seeing - Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Chantal Akerman’s slow-burning masterpiece was voted as the Greatest Film of All Time in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll.

With an introduction by Isabel Stevens (Managing Editor of Sight & Sound).

Look who’s back: The Hollywood Renaissance & the Blacklist

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join season curator Andy Willis for a talk that invites you to re-think the contribution of Hollywood’s blacklistees to American cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A radical, elliptical tale of a mother-and-son drifitng apart, Muratova’s underseen classic is a refreshingly challenging cinematic work.

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Juliet Bashore’s queer docufiction stars Tigr Mennett and real-life porn star girlfriend Sharon Mitchell celebrates the heady days of the San Francisco underground in the 1980s.

The Sun 30 Jul screening will feature an introduction from Harriet Taylor (SWITCH).

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Last Seduction

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Spinning a web of intrigue around her male victims, this erotic thriller is centred around one of the all-time great femme fatales!

This screening will be introduced by Anna Bogutskaya, author of Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, followed by a book signing.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

In this classic late 1960s liberal western from Abraham Polonsky, Robert Redford leads a posse in pursuit of a native American on the run in the early part of the 20th century.

Wth an introduction by Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME in Manchester.

UK Premiere: Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Newly restored, Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive is a stylistically daring and vibrant pulp trip through 1990s Hong Kong.

With an introduction by Jonathan Bygraves (film historian, programmer and video editor) and featuring a specially commissioned video essay Jonathan Bygraves on Wayne Wang.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A journey behind the curtain of film preservation, and the painstaking work that ensures film stays alive for modern audiences.

Join us before the film for an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Based on interviews with Mazzetti shortly before her death in 2020, this documentary reclaims her position as a key artist of post-war Europe.

With an introduction with director Brighid Lowe and Henry K. Miller.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join a discussion with filmmakers and artists who use and work with the medium of 16mm fiilm.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

This rediscovered gem of American DIY filmmaking is an elegiac tribute to Black female originality.

Join us before the film for an introduction from writer and curator Karen Alexander, in conversation with T A P E Collective.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A pair of Deaf dock workers struggle to make ends meet in London’s East End in Lorenza Mazzetti’s lyrical centrepiece of Free Cinema.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A searing, compassionate three-and-a-half-hour exploration of relationships in the May ’68 sexual revolution's aftermath.

The Sun 30 July screening will be introduced by Film scholar, curator and founder of Day for Night Sonali Joshi.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Café & Bar, Watershed

Join us at the 13:35 screening of Together on Fri 28 July which will feature BSL interpreters to describe any sounds or dialogue that form part of the film. After the screening please joins us, from 14:30, for a post-screening discussion in the Café & Bar. The discussion will be hosted by Deaf artist, performer and filmmaker David Ellington and will feature BSL interpretation throughout.

The Passionate Stranger with Carol Morley

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Black and white collides with Technicolor fantasy in Muriel Box’s romantic comedy, poking fun at the wish fulfilment behind cinematic romances.

With an introduction and followed by a discussion with filmmaker Carol Morley, Muriel Box BFI season curator Josephine Botting and film writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Hustler and singer Jason Holliday regales us over a long night of the soul in this iconic LGBTQ+ documentary.

With an introduction by Jason Wood (Executive Director of Public Programmes and Audiences).

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Female voyeurism and desire collide together in the centre of a seedy early ‘80s New York.

With an introduction from Rachel Pronger (Invisible Women) who will host a Zoom Q&A with director Bette Gordon following the screening.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Highly praised but little seen, this stark murder mystery rips the police procedural film apart.

With an introduction by Mehelli Modi from Second Run.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Bristol Aquarium (about 3 min walk from Watershed)

On the director’s centenary year, rediscover this wild and trippy blast of Japanese genre cinema!

With an introduction by Christina Newland, film writer and critic and Jonathan Bygraves, film historian, programmer and video editor.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Barbara Loden’s only feature film is a masterpiece of hardscrabble, independent Americana.

Join us before the film for an introduction from film critic Tara Judah and film scholar and critic Elena Gorfinkel.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Café & Bar, Watershed

A screening of shorts projected on 16mm in the Café & Bar, closing with a rare screening of Michael Snow’s experimental film Wavelength (courtesy of LUX Moving Image).

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Across Bristol

Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for the first of two different, gentle, walks that between them take in the landmarks and personalities of cinema in central Bristol from the 1880s to the present day.

Led by Mark Fuller (local film enthusiast and historian).

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Sex, hair salons and state affairs all collide in this classic farce starring Warren Beatty and the formerly blacklisted Lee Grant as Felicia Karpf.

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A naturalist fantasy in kaleidoscopic colours, as a family holidays in the Stockholm archipelago.

With an introduction by curator, researcher and editor Dr Peter Walsh.

Please note: This event took place in July 2023

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join BFI National Film Archive Curatorial Archivist Rosie Taylor to see films screened on a 9.5mm projector and learn more about its prolific and fascinating history.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A Teherani taxi driver finds an abandoned baby in the back seat of his cab, journeying through the city in a vain attempt to find the infant’s mother.

With an introduction by Nariman Massoumi, filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in Film & TV at University of Bristol.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

In an Oscar®-nominated performance, Diahann Carroll plays a black working class mother struggling to make ends meet, offering an antidote to the testosterone driven star-turns of the blaxploitation cycle.

With an introduction by writer and curator Karen Alexander.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Forgotten at the time, this extravagant production of Salomé is now one of the great feminist films.

With an introduction and followed by a post-screening discussion with invisible Women and film writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson Presented by Invisible Women and South West Silents, with a live accompaniment by pianist and composer Meg Morley.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

20th Century Flicks (about 9 min walk from Watershed)

The great Czech animator Jan Svankmajer gives a surreal spin on Lewis Carroll's classic story with this truly absurd tale which mixes animation and live action to brilliant effect.

With an introduction by Tara Judah (Film programmer and cultural critic)

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

The film that helped director Robert Altman break through into the mainstream, M*A*S*H captures the meeting of the free-wheeling sentiments of the 1960s counter-culture with the cynicism that would emerge within American society in the 1970s.

With an introduction by Andy Willis (Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME in Manchester.)

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

20th Century Flicks (about 9 min walk from Watershed)

Drawing on Creole folklore, and the stories that arose out of her childhood, Kasi Lemmons’s debut is a bewitching Southern Gothic tale.

With an introduction by Adam Murray (Writer, Critic, Broadcaster and Programmer of Bristol Black Horror Club).

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A hazy, neon-splattered descent through modern Taipei at night-time, thrumming with techno, alcohol and ennui.

With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Summer of Soul: Expanded Screening & Afterparty

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Across Bristol

Party like it’s 1969! An expanded screening of Sundance award-winner Summer of Soul, followed by an underground funk & soul party in The Galleries Car Park Basement in Broadmead.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

The devoutly anarchic comic satire on religion, greed and consumerism in 1980s America.

With an introduction by strand curator Steph Read and a pre-recorded intro by Beth B.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

A cult classic of Brazilian Queer cinema, this outrageously funky and stylish crime film infuriated the Brazilian military dictatorship at the time.

With an introduction of Film curator Lorena Pino and a pre-recorded introduction with director Antonio Carlos da Fontura.

Content warning: the film contains outdated practices, such as negative depictions and / or mistreatment of people which some people may find offensive.

Please note: This was screened in July 2023

Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman hustle their way through 1960s New York in this bittersweet classic of New Hollywood which remains the only X-rated film to be awarded the Oscar® for Best Picture.

With an introduction with Andy Willis (Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME in Manchester).