Cinema Rediscovered 2025 Programme

Join some of the most inspiring voices in film exhibition, restoration and distribution to reflect on and re-imagine how we present cinema of the past.

BAFTA-winning and Oscar®-nominated producer Stephen Woolley (of The Scala Cinema and Palace Pictures fame) delivers our Opening Night Keynote, ushering in the festival’s main strand Against the Grain: 1980s British Cinema.

Set against a backdrop of emerging teen culture and rising racial tension in late 50s London, Colin MacInnes' cult novel is brought to the screen in Julien Temple's exuberant musical adaptation with a who's who cast of music luminaries from Bowie and Ray Davies to Sade.

Café & Bar, Watershed

The year is 1986… DJ Cheeba in the Café & Bar takes us back in time with a DJ/VJ set inspired by the riot of day-glo design and music that is Absolute Beginners.

A young boy comes of age amid a challenging upbringing in this sensitive emblem of 1970s New German cinema.

Waterside 3 Event Space, Watershed

Colonial Reels: Histories and Afterlives of Colonial Film Collections is a three-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. This event, organised by the project lead, Jacqueline Maingard, Associate Professor in Film at the University of Bristol, and the project team, puts colonial film collections in conversation with the Pan African cinema archive.

Set against a backdrop of emerging teen culture and rising racial tension in late 50s London, Colin MacInnes' cult novel is brought to the screen in Julien Temple's exuberant musical adaptation. This is a Relaxed Screening.

Carlos Saura’s début feature film, presented here in a restored and uncensored version remains one of cinema's most distinctive portraits of those living on the margins in Madrid, shot entirely on location.

Waterside 3 Event Space, Watershed

Join Professor Ian Christie and film historian Sheldon Hall for a talk exploring the influence of Channel 4’s approach to film.

A manifesto shot between 1972 and 1975, Sidney Sokhona's first film tells the story of the struggle of immigrant workers in France showing alongside Med Hondo’s debut.

Winner of the Golden Bear at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival, Carlos Saura’s raw, startlingly naturalistic tale of love outside the law reflects the turmoil of a generation navigating the social upheavals of the post-Franco Spanish society.

Join co-directors Matevž Jerman and Jurij Meden (Austrian Film Museum in Vienna) for a brief and imperfect history of artists' film in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia.

One of the iconic films of Portuguese Cinema Novo, a vivid portrait of a former boxing star (and of 1960s Lisbon) with stunning cinematography by Augusto Cabrita and a jazz score by Manuel Jorge Veloso.

1974 LA, and three self-determined young women look for their place in the world. Female friendship, work and utopian socialism braid the narrative beautifully together. Will the women do anything for money?

Co-director of Alpe-Adria Underground! Matevž Jerman has selected some recently restored experimental/avant-garde shorts from the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (1945-1991).

Secrets, lies, communism and loyalty all loom large in this criminally underseen British political thriller shot by a young Roger Deakins starring Gabriel Byrne in one of his early leading roles.

This daring and progressive account of a complex love triangle broke all manner of taboos to emerge as India’s first queer film and an icon of Parallel Cinema.

Gloriously restored in 4K, Miloš Forman’s triumphant drama examines the rivalry between classical masters Salieri and Mozart through a uniquely inquisitive lens.

Forty years after its release, Donna Dietch’s 1950s set romance remains one of the most influential and beautifully shot lesbian films of all time.

Charles Burnett’s pioneering account of blue-collar existence paved the way for African American representation on the big screen.

Film Historian Professor Ian Christie, who contributed to Channel 4's Vision series, will talk about the impact it made in film culture in the UK and his own work on programmes about Jean Luc Godard and Raul Ruiz.

Set in the declining North Shields fishing industry, this drama came out of the Channel 4 supported workshop movement and clearly prefigures the localised work of contemporary filmmakers such as Mark Jenkin, with its focus on the realities of marginalised communities.

She wrote, he directed: The Swimmer, adapted by husband-wife duo Frank and Eleanor Perry, is a surreal odyssey through the suburbs starring Burt Lancaster.

After being betrayed by her husband, Leonor embarks on a quest for self-discovery and begins to live new experiences.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Find out how a festival like Cinema Rediscovered is programmed by joining a discussion with some of the festival curators who will share their insight, thinking and journey and discuss how to get involved.

She wrote; he directed: Joan Didion’s modern classic is adapted by Frank Perry in this elliptical, introspective interrogation of 1960s Hollywood starring Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.

17th-century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, defies social expectations, becoming a renowned intellectual and writer during the Spanish Inquisition.

A groundbreaking experimental film essay on race and disorder in Britain, filmed by John Akomfrah from the Black Audio Film Collective in Birmingham and London during the riots of 1985.

In this spirited comedy, an aimless young man’s search for purpose, sex and self-identity becomes a microcosm of Czechoslovakian life amid the height of the Cold War.

This stylish and inventive comedy thriller stars Lucy Sheen as Elaine, a young law clerk, tasked with executing the will of Chinatown businessman Sam Wong who has died in mysterious circumstances.

Join director Stephen Frears, writer Hanif Kureishi and actor Gordon Warnecke for this 40th anniversary showing of the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette, the story of two lovers attempting to open a glamorous laundromat amid the turbulence of life in Thatcher’s Britain.

20th Century Flicks Videodrome and 20th Century Flicks Kino

Uproarious and hugely influential, Sam Raimi’s cabin-in-the-woods horror comedy was the very first title acquired by Stephen Woolley’s Palace Pictures.

A sharp, satirical tale of love, class and female resilience in 1950s Brazil, from globe-trotting auteur Alberto Cavalcanti - newly restored and ripe for rediscovery.

Marianne Basler shines as a Parisian sex worker looking for an authentic connection in this moving drama of identity and class consciousness.

A young Los Angeles couple is invited by the mysterious Diane to her secluded desert home. Unbeknownst to them, she is a centuries-old vampire, and it’s not long before they become the objects of her desires.

Yasuzō Masumura adapts Junichiro Tanizaki’s story as a visually arresting story of sexually charged vengeance.

Across Bristol

Bristol has been an UNESCO City Of Film since 2017, but Bristol and cinema have been entwined since – some would say before – the beginning of moving pictures. Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for one of two gentle walks.

Projection Rooms, Watershed

Join BFI National Archive Curator Rosie Taylor on a tour of Watershed’s projection booth and discover how the films screening at the festival make it to the screen.

Fact and fiction are intertwined to dazzling effect as the legacy of screen actor Henry Fonda becomes a metaphor for America’s ever-changing landscape.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

From state-of-the-art 13th-century warfare to perfumed sex, The Fall of Otrar is a hypnotic epic about one of world history’s crucial battles championed by Martin Scorsese.

Made with an all female crew, Sally Potter’s (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) ground-breaking first feature is a key film of early ‘80s feminist cinema.

Undershed, Watershed

With a colourful medley of cartoons, an orphaned squirrel, and mind-blowing science on display there is something for everyone in this family screening presented on 16mm.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join in a Chat & Craft drop-in workshop led by Cressida Williams inspired by the films showing at Cinema Rediscovered.

The Cube Microplex (about 20 min walk from Watershed)

This seminal African allegory by the late Souleymane Cissé (1940 – 2025) exists outside of time and space to act as a powerful commentary on fathers and sons, light and dark.

This is part of a series of events which look at the UK-wide impact of London’s The Film Society in its centenary year. Co-curated by Bryony Dixon (BFI National Archive) and film historian Henry K. Miller.

Structured around fourteen of Shakespeare's sonnets read by Judi Dench, Derek Jarman’s film is an exploration of love and desire between two men.

20th Century Flicks Videodrome and 20th Century Flicks Kino

An extraordinarily inventive fantasy from Terry Gilliam in which schoolboy Warnock is rescued from a dull suburban existence by a band of time travellers.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed.

Undershed, Watershed

Ever wondered how to project 16mm film? As part of the celebrations of the centenary of the creation of the first film society this is an opportunity to get hands-on with 16mm film.

Following a fatal car crash involving a swan outside a zoo, twin-brother zoologists Oliver and Oswald become fascinated by the processes of decay.

The early life of influential American President Abraham Lincoln becomes cinematic nirvana in the hands of director John Ford and actor Henry Fonda.

The plight of the African American Deaf community is put under the spotlight in this moving and ambitious landmark of independent cinema.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Toru Murakawa’s gritty and violent thriller is a vital addition to the pantheon of Japanese crime epics, centring on a deeply scarred war photographer turned bank robber.

A white Midwestern divorcee, Julie (Barabara Barrie), and her black co-worker Frank Richards (Bernie Hamilton) fall in love but racial prejudice gets in the way with devastating consequences.

Neil Jordan’s strikingly poetic debut feature explores the numbing violence of the Troubles starring actor Stephen Rea as Saxophonist Danny, one of the first films commissioned by Channel 4.

Who would have thought that this small budget film made for Channel 4 from a script by a then unknown writer about a young Pakistani Londoner (Gordon Warnecke), his ambitions for his uncle’s laundrette and his developing relationship with a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis in a breakthrough role) would become one of the most successful and iconic films of the 80s?

Café & Bar, Watershed

We are delighted to be hosting a special Deaf Conversations About Cinema event as part of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Director Yasuzō Masumura broke new ground in Japanese cinema with this progressive exploration of lesbian sexuality.

One of the most moving and committed works of political cinema from the late 1970s America.

Rebelling against dull conformism, Michel Piccoli is mesmerising as a factory labourer suffering a meltdown and regressing to a caveman in this anarchic assault on bourgeois ideals.

Across Bristol

Bristol has been an UNESCO City Of Film since 2017, but Bristol and cinema have been entwined since – some would say before – the beginning of moving pictures. Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for the second of two gentle walks.

In this, her first European film, Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) plays a dancer drawn into a tragic romantic triangle when she meets a cabaret knife thrower and his capricious sweetheart.

A young woman finds herself on trial for her husband’s death in this perceptive Japanese drama, presented in a new 4K restoration.

Curzon Cinema (about 45 min bus journey from Watershed)

The ground-breaking first feature from the director of Orlando and The Tango Lesson, The Gold Diggers is a key film of early '80s feminist cinema.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join John Piedot from Silk Factory, one of the world’s leading Creative Agencies, for a plotted history of the cinema trailer.

Alan Clarke’s screen adaptation of playwright Andrea Dunbar’s uninhibited portrait of working-class life caused outrage at the time and reset the debate about class and representation on screen.

Samuel Fuller combines two favourite topics, crime and GIs, with this gangster film involving crooked ex-soldiers organising a syndicate in occupied Japan.

In her final silent film set in in Paris and the French Riviera, Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) stars as a Chinese variety dancer who models for a young artist and ends up falling in love.

The festival closes with the UK premiere of Yasuzō Masumura’s impassioned drama, which acts as a fierce critique of Japanese society.

Austrian auteur Michael Haneke places social tensions and cultural neuroses under the microscope with characteristic precision.

Café & Bar, Watershed

It’s time to prove your film knowledge at this year's Cinema Rediscovered Film Quiz — a night where deep-cut movie knowledge meets friendly competition.