Cinema Rediscovered 2022 Programme

For those of you working in film exhibition and archives, join some of the most distinctive voices in film curation and archiving to explore the potential of reframing film heritage.

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Award-winning journalist, writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed delivers this year’s Philip French Memorial Lecture reflecting on her journalistic journey through cinema.

A brooding jazz saxophonist lives in a simmering state of jealousy with his listless and possibly unfaithful wife in this 4K restoration of David Lynch's classic thriller.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Join DJ Cheeba in the Café & Bar for a live DJ/VJ set inspired by the deliriously enigmatic work of David Lynch.

Archive activists Invisible Women speak to guest contributors including So Mayer about reimagining film history through a female-centric lens.

Farida Benlyazid's poignant tribute to womanhood and spirituality is brought to life once again through the restoration efforts of the Transnational Moroccan Cinema Project from the University of Exeter.

James Cagney and Joan Blondell sizzle as a con-artist duo robbing hotel guests in this brilliant crime comedy.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Join the team behind Global Women’s Film Heritage, a collective of researchers, archive practitioners and film exhibitors dedicated to making women and their films more visible for a networking lunch reflecting on the absences and presences of women's work in film archives.

Two women forge a connection that breaches the confines of time, history, and faith. An essential work of Tanzanian cinema being returned to audiences openly and inclusively in honour of its 20th Anniversary by collective, Ajabu Ajabu.

Socialite Norma Shearer risks total ruination after a sordid love affair with murderous gangster Clark Gable.

Join Annouchka De Andrade, Sarah Maldoror’s daughter, for a special screening of this unforgettable revolutionary film about a pivotal moment in Angola’s fight for freedom.

Join the dream team (author, critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson and film critic and journalist Christina Newland) for a conversation about the rights and wrongs of Pre-code Hollywood.

Made in the twilight of the silent era Sunrise is a milestone of Film Expressionism and one of the few films to instantly achieve legendary status.

Two Senegalese émigré street cleaners enter a “haute cuisine” competition to help their friend after stumbling upon a 19th-century cookbook.

Marlene Dietrich is at her wicked best as Shanghai Lily, a courtesan whose reputation brings a hint of scandal to a train ride through war-torn China.

Director Sara Gómez assesses the complexities of intersectional, marginalised lives in 1970's Cuba through a factual narrative that contextualises the relationship, the community, and the tensions of life in a new socialist society.

Curator Karen Alexander presents a trio of shorts that resonate with bell hooks's seminal classic collection of essays on film, Reel To Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies.

Set on the stunning French Riviera during the height of Nice’s world famous carnival, Georg Jacoby’s The Joker is a highly entertaining thrill-ride starring Weston-super-Mare's Henry Edwards as the charismatic ‘joker’. 

Waterside 1, Watershed

Former V&A Curator Keith Lodwick will explore how costume designers Adrian and Banton were central to the creation of both the character and the public image of two Golden Age stars, Dietrich and Garbo.

Join author and activist So Mayer and guests for the UK Premiere of one of the first pro-gay documentaries in the history of cinema, painstakingly restored by the Munich Film Museum nearly a century after it was made.

Charles Burnett's tender, witty and affectionate tale of a disillusioned slaughterhouse worker, and the solace to be found in the simplest moments of life.

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

An unnamed, aspiring actress's quest for new work lands her in the warm, supportive embrace of a women-run phone sex agency in Spike Lee's overlooked comedy.

One of the most jarringly original independent films of the 1990s, Nina Menkes’ lost underground classic re-emerges in this gorgeous new restoration.

An ode to drugs, sex, and diamonds starring veteran screen pair William Powell and Kay Francis as a gentleman thief and the posh lady who falls for him.

One of the era’s most sophisticated examinations of gender and identity with Garbo perfect as the bisexual Swedish monarch who was raised from birth as a boy.

A moving, yet unsentimental, view of motherhood that challenges social biases about adoption and offers new insight into mother-daughter relationships.

The Afterlight documents the physical presence of over three hundred actors who are no longer alive and must reconcile themselves to a life lived solely through the performances they committed to celluloid.

In this much-loved cult classic, an emotional and romantic bond develops between one of cinema’s most unlikely pairs.

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

A hybrid fantasy/horror vision combining elements of 90s pop-culture, folk horror, and the uncanny that explores themes around redemption, identity and belonging.

Across Bristol

Join local film 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.

During the summer of 2016, a fishing boat off the shores of Iceland made a most curious catch: four reels of 35mm film, seemingly of Soviet provenance...

Fritz Lang's first American film is a searing indictment of mob justice and lynching - and still a striking cautionary tale.

A compelling documentary on the migration of pioneering African Americans to Paris and the ensuing cultural exchange, from Josephine Baker and beyond.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Fancy diving deeper into film culture? Whether you’re a film lover or are aspiring to work in film writing/criticism, this session will give you insights into one of the world’s most distinctive international voices in film journalism: NOTEBOOK – created, prepared and published by MUBI.

A nameless fugitive escapes from a Gansu Province labour camp, desperate to see a newsreel said to promise a glimpse of his estranged daughter.

Arnolfini

The first part of an epic masterpiece of conspiracy that constructs its own dark labyrinth from the base materials of human fear and paranoia.

Jean Harlow sizzles and the dialogue crackles in this boundary-pushing comedy of sex and social-climbing.

The improbable but true story of con man Douglas Street, the titular “chameleon” who successfully impersonated his way up the socioeconomic ladder.

From the makers of French musical Zou Zou, this comedy sees a mischievous shepherd girl rising through society to become a pretend princess and the toast of Paris nightlife.

Araya is a poetic, visually arresting look at life on Venezuela’s Araya Peninsula, where generations of labourers have depended on mining the arid region’s salt pans for their livelihood.

Arnolfini

The second part of Fritz Lang's epic masterpiece of conspiracy that constructs its own dark labyrinth from the base materials of human fear and paranoia.

Billy Wilder's sizzling, simmering tale of seduction and murder where our wise cracking hero, insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) is seduced way out of his depth by the bracelet charms, and more, of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck).

A landmark work of wuxia cinema, Swordsman of all Swordsmen, newly restored by the Taiwan Film Institute tells the revenge story of Tsai Ying-chieh (Tien Peng).

The gripping and tension-laden original thriller by Bristol-born J. Lee Thompson about an embittered ex-con terrorising the frightened family of the meek lawyer who put him in prison.

Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman play a pair of American ex-pat jazz musicians living la vie bohème in Paris in this intoxicating, music-filled romance. 

Across Bristol

Join local film enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for the second 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.

Screened publicly just once before it was banned and then lost for decades, this rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema re-emerges to take its place as one of the most astonishing works of the country’s pre-revolution New Wave.

A timeless love story wrapped inside a gripping wartime thriller that focuses on the rekindled love experienced by American expat Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and the beautiful, married Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman).

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Fall in love with the magic of the movies at one of the oldest running cinema venues in the country, Clevedon’s Curzon Cinema & Arts.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Join 20th Century Flicks’ Dave Taylor and Daisy Steinhardt in conversation with one another as they try to figure out the answer to the eternal question: just how has 20th Century Flicks lasted so long?

Adapted from a Hemingway short story, The Killers is essential post-war existential cinema where our doomed hero awaits his inevitable violent death.

Barbara Stanwyck climbs her way to the top of New York, one man at a time, in this bold Depression-era drama.

Gary Cooper won an Oscar® for his role as Marshal Will Kane, forced to stand alone when an outlaw he put away returns from prison.

The late Menelik Shabazz's pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher's London.

Kinuyo Tanaka’s third film as a director is perhaps her finest – a deeply emotional cinematic portrait of Fumiko Nakajo, an ill-fated female tanka poet.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Wind down and rediscover the movie trivia hidden in the recesses of your brain with a bumper edition of our Film Quiz celebrating 20th Century Flicks’ and Watershed’s 40th Birthday co-hosted this year by 20th Century Flicks’ Daisy Steinhardt and Watershed’s Becky Sands.