Cinema Rediscovered 2023 | Programme

Still from Variety. Photo credit: Other Parties

Previous events in this programme

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

Wed 26 July

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.

Wed 26 July

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.

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

Wed 26 July

Thu 27 July

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

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.

Wed 26 July

With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

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

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.

Thu 27 July

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

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.

Thu 27 July

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

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

Thu 27 July

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

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

Thu 27 July

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.

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.

Thu 27 July

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

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

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

Thu 27 July

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

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

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.

Thu 27 July

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

Thu 27 July

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

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.

Thu 27 July

Sun 30 July

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

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Last Seduction

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

Thu 27 July

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.

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.

Thu 27 July

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

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

Thu 27 July

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

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

Fri 28 July

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

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

Fri 28 July

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

Waterside 2, Watershed

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

Fri 28 July

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

Fri 28 July

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

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.

Fri 28 July

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

Fri 28 July

Sun 30 July

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

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.

Fri 28 July

14:30 (ends 15:30) BSL, Free

The Passionate Stranger with Carol Morley

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

Fri 28 July

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.

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

Fri 28 July

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

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

Fri 28 July

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

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

Fri 28 July

With an introduction by Mehelli Modi from Second Run.

Bristol Aquarium (about 3 min walk from Watershed)

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

Fri 28 July

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

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

Fri 28 July

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

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).

Fri 28 July

22:00 (ends 23:45)

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.

Sat 29 July

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

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

Sat 29 July

With an introduction by Invisible Women.

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

Sat 29 July

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

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.

Sat 29 July

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.

Sat 29 July

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

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.

Sat 29 July

With an introduction by writer and curator Karen Alexander.

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

Sat 29 July

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.

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.

Sat 29 July

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

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.

Sat 29 July

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

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.

Sat 29 July

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

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

Sat 29 July

With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Summer of Soul: Expanded Screening & Afterparty

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.

Sat 29 July

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

Sat 29 July

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

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

Sat 29 July

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.

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.

Sat 29 July

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

Across Bristol

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

Sun 30 July

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

Lee Thompson’s gripping capital punishment drama Yield to the Night from 1956 is a Brit noir classic and a unique career achievement for Diana Dors as Mary Hilton, a woman awaiting execution for murder.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by Mark Cosgrove (Cinema Rediscovered Founder)

Across Bristol

Lovers of analogue, immerse yourself in the sensory splendour of 16mm, in its centenary year! Enjoy free workshops in splicing, dicing and projecting, alongside live performances from Surgeons Girl.

Sun 30 July

For this event, we will be joined by the Compass Presents team; Surgeons Girl, Graeme Hogge (Nachleben Film & Archive, Cube Founder).

Join Professor Ian Christie for this special screening of A Trip to Tetlapayac in search of Eisenstein in Mexico, plus the UK Premiere of Mark Rappaport's The Marriage of Greta Garbo and Sergei Eisenstein.

Sun 30 July

Followed by a discussion hosted by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Remembered for Al Pacino’s dynamic central performance as an NYPD cop resisting the corruption all around him, Serpico is a classic film of the paranoid 1970s, one that offers a detailed depiction of a system gone bad.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by film writer and critic Christina Newland.

A kimono designer in 1950s Kyoto is caught between two worlds in this riveting melodrama.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by Dr Rayna Denison, Professor in Film and Digital Arts Bristol University.

An instant classic from its premiere onwards, Charlotte Wells’ debut feature marks her as a thrilling new voice in cinema.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by Mark Cosgrove (Cinema Rediscovered Founder).

Lynne Ramsay’s second feature is a mesmerising journey into a 21st century existential crisis shown here on a brand new 35mm BFI print.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by Kimberley Sheehan (Film and Events Programmer, BFI).

Calypso music is celebrated in all its beauty in this restored documentary featuring legends such as Calypso Rose and Lord Kitchener.

Sun 30 July

Before the screening, join Bristol-based and Cameroon born musician, composer, musical instruments designer and teacher Alphonse, who is also St Pauls Carnival’s official steelpan instructor from 15:30 for a steel pan performance in the Café & Bar and the cinema. Find out more about St Pauls Carnival’s amazing year round work and how you can support their outreach programme here.

Alphonse is a Bristol-based and Cameroon born musician, composer, musical instruments designer and teacher. The vision behind his music is to value African-Caribbean cultures, building bridges within communities and empowering others - his expressive talent grooves through sounds and melodies from steel and skins, wood and souls from African ancestors. Alphonse wants to bring back the authentic traditional sounds of assiko, calypso, and meringue, all mixed in ONE AfCa Rhythmo.

We are also delighted to be joined by zoom by director Kavery Kaul for an intro and Q&A hosted by Twelve30 Collective.

Curzon Cinema & Arts Open Doors and Serpico

Curzon Clevedon (about 45 min bus journey from Watershed)

Take a trip out to one of the oldest running cinema venues in the country and experience Sidney Lumet’s take on the true story of New York policeman Frank Serpico in a brand new 4K restoration for its 50th anniversary.

Sun 30 July

The screening will be introduced by Season Curator Andy Willis (Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME in Manchester).

A radical view of the cultural and social upheavals of the late 1960s America from an African perspective.

Sun 30 July

With an introduction by Writer/Curator Karen Alexander and Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Wind down and rediscover the movie trivia hidden in the recesses of your brain.

Sun 30 July

Hosted by Timon Singh (Forbidden World, Bristol Bad Film Club & Producer at Watershed) and Becky Sands from Watershed’s Box Office team.