Curzon Cinema & Arts (about 45 min bus journey from Watershed)
Priority booking opens on Wed 27 May at 12:00 for Cinema Rediscovered passholders and Club Shed members.
General sale opens on Mon 1 June at 10:00.
“In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly… an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings…This new restoration may just be everything that [Gloria] Swanson dreamed of for her lovechild Queen Kelly." - Pamela Hutchinson, The Guardian
Take a trip out to the stunning Curzon Cinema in Clevedon (and a peek at their Christie organ) followed by a special screening of this lavish late silent masterpiece.
It should have been a dream collaboration: a glamorous world-famous movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her financier lover (Joseph P. Kennedy) hire a celebrated director (Erich von Stroheim) to make a groundbreaking independent film. Instead, the making of the film was rife with controversy and became the most infamous unfinished film in cinema history.
Set in an imaginary European country, von Stroheim tells the story of a prince, the orphan girl he falls in love with, and a vein and cruel queen whose jealousy wreaks havoc on everyone involved. Swanson plays the orphan girl whose life is turned upside down when the prince (Walter Byron) becomes obsessed with her, angering his betrothed queen.
Basing his reconstruction on von Stroheim’s original scripts, Milestone Films’ Dennis Doros and Amy Heller employed multiple techniques to recreate the film’s lurid dénouement. This vital new digital reconstruction, overseen by Milestone Films’ Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, brings von Stroheim’s original script to life, and the result is Queen Kelly in its most complete and spectacular form to date.
Presented in collaboration with South West Silents as part of Other Ways of Seeing, supported by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery.
Reconstruction: Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, Milestone Film & Video, Harrington Park, NJ. Nitrate materials and stills courtesy of The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. 4K digital stabilization, timing and cleanup by Metropolis Post, NYC. Colourist: Jason Crump. Digital restoration artist: Ian Bostick. Supervised by Milestone Films.
Arrive at 12:00 noon for a behind-the-scenes guided tour and a Christie organ demonstration before the screening at 13:00.
With an introduction by critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson and author of The Curse of Queen Kelly.
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Special offers:
Booking for more than 10 events/screenings?
Buy a Cinema Rediscovered Festival Pass (£130 full / £100 concessions / £80 24 and under) and select your tickets for as many of the 60+ screenings and events during the festival as you want.
Booking for between 4 to 10 events/screenings?
Multi-Ticket Package Offer: get 15% off the regular ticket price when you book 4-10 Cinema Rediscovered screenings and/or events. The discount will automatically apply when you add the tickets to your basket.
Club Shed members get 15% off all individual Cinema Rediscovered tickets.