Cinema Rediscovered returns to Watershed for a second year, bringing the finest digital restorations, some contemporary classics and film print rarities and putting them back where they belong, on the big screen.

We are delighted to be opening the festival with a special 40th anniversary screening of the Sidney Lumet prescient 1977 classic Network introduced by award-winning BBC journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. One of the festival highlights includes a strand called Manipulating The Message which explores the fictional media’s handling of the truth on screen, as perfectly captured in Network.

“We know things are bad, worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy… I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell ‘I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!’” Howard Beale, Network (1977)

Samira explains:

"I used to have a postcard with that famous quote on my desk in the newsroom. But since I've seen the film I'm far more ambivalent about its message and wary of the sweeping way it's hailed by journalists as some kind of parable. I’d urge everyone to watch the film in its entirety; it opens up some very complex and timely issues.”

Manipulating the Message continues its exploration into how the media and journalism have been portrayed in Hollywood with work by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Billy Wilder, (Ace in the Hole) Gus Van Sant (To Die For), Alexander MacKendrick (Sweet Smell of Success) and Lewis Milestone (the UK premiere of a new restoration of The Front Page).

Further highlights include a complete 10-hour screening of one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements in visual storytelling, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s TV epic The Dekalogue, and the UK premiere of Herbert Kline’s MoMA-restored 1939 historical document Lights Out in Europe, which records a Europe on the brink of total war.

Festival Curator Mark Cosgrove adds:

“The festival provides an opportunity to revisit and reassess the unique experience of films in their natural environment, the cinema. Other art forms have their temples - museums, galleries, opera house, theatres. For films, cinema is where they can truly come alive and be rediscovered.”

Cinema Rediscovered takes place from Thu 27 to Sun 30 July and is presented by Watershed, South West Silents, 20th Century Flicks, The Cube, Curzon Cinema & Arts Clevedon and the Independent Cinema Office.

The weekender is followed by a UK wide Cinema Rediscovered tour of venues including Chapter (Cardiff), Broadway (Nottingham), Home (Manchester), QFT (Belfast), Filmhouse, (Edinburgh) Showroom (Sheffield), mac (Birmingham) and Exeter Phoenix.

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