Wed 23 - Sun 27 July
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by curator Ellisha Izumi.
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.
part of Reframing Film
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.
part of Reframing Film
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Stanley Kubrick's breathtaking exploration of Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray's novel sees his 18th century Irish adventurer meet his share of women, take part in the Seven Years' War, get recruited as a spy and marry into the English aristocracy, inventing new stories about himself at every turn of the road.
There will be a 10 minute interval midway through the film.
part of Reframing Film
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.
With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by writer, curator and filmmaker Daniel Bird.
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.
With an introduction by writer and film curator So Mayer.
part of Reframing Film
Undershed
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.
With an introduction by film curator and event producer Dáire Carson.
part of Reframing Film
Waterside 2, Watershed
Join in a Chat & Craft drop-in workshop led by Cressida Williams inspired by the films showing at Cinema Rediscovered.
part of Restored & 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.
With an introduction by film curator, programmer and producer Mosa Mpetha.
part of Reframing Film
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.
Presented by Bryony Dixon and Henry K Miller in partnership with South West Silents.
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.
With an introduction by curator Charlotte Bendrey.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by curator and creative producer Dáire Carson.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by film historian, repertory programmer and video essayist Jonathan Bygraves.
Following a fatal car crash involving a swan outside a zoo, twin-brother zoologists Oliver and Oswald become fascinated by the processes of decay.
With an introduction by season curator and Cinema Rediscovered founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
The early life of influential American President Abraham Lincoln becomes cinematic nirvana in the hands of director John Ford and actor Henry Fonda.
With an introduction by writer Sean Wilson.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
The plight of the African American Deaf community is put under the spotlight in this moving and ambitious landmark of independent cinema.
With a pre-recorded introduction by director Zeinabu irene Davis and an in person introduction by film writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson. With BSL (British Sign Language) interpretation.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by film writer and critic Christina Newland.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by writer/curator Karen Alexander.
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.
With an introduction by Hugh Odling-Smee (Manager of Film Hub NI and FAN Screen Heritage Lead)
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?
The Sun 27 July 11:20 screening includes an introductory chat with Karin Bamborough (Assistant editor, then commissioning editor for Film On Four, 1981-91) hosted by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.
Waterside 1, Watershed
We are delighted to be hosting a special Deaf Conversations About Cinema event as part of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered.
part of Masumura x Wakao
Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)
Director Yasuzō Masumura broke new ground in Japanese cinema with this progressive exploration of lesbian sexuality.
With an introduction by curator Harriet Taylor.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
One of the most moving and committed works of political cinema from the late 1970s America.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
part of Reframing Film
Café & Bar, Watershed
Join us in the in Café & Bar to re-ignite the spirit of the original London Film Society screenings with a free-flowing evening of vintage film shorts presented live-in-the-room on 16mm.
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.
The screening in Cinema 1 features an introduction by producer Stephen Woolley and director Julien Temple hosted by season curator and Cinema Rediscovered founder Mark Cosgrove. This will be streamed live to the screening in Cinema 3.
The screenings are followed by an After-party with DJ Cheeba inspired by the riot of day-glo design and music that is Absolute Beginners. Free entry. Priority entry to Absolute Beginners ticket holders.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Gloriously restored in 4K, Miloš Forman’s triumphant drama examines the rivalry between classical masters Salieri and Mozart through a uniquely inquisitive lens.
Ticketholders can get a complimentary Wiper & True beer in the Café & Bar before the Thursday screening from 19:30, where we will be joined by pianist Kevin Satizabal (Paraorchestra), immersing us in classical music.
With an introduction by international conductor Charles Hazlewood.
part of Reframing Film
College Green Bus Stop
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.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an introduction by film writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson and live music accompaniment by Stephen Horne.
part of Masumura x Wakao
A young woman finds herself on trial for her husband’s death in this perceptive Japanese drama, presented in a new 4K restoration.
With an introduction by co-curator Yuriko Hamaguchi.
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.
With an introduction by writer and film curator So Mayer.
Doors to Curzon Clevedon open at midday to give you the opportunity to see behind the scenes of this historic cinema.
part of Reframing Film
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.
With an introductory chat with Karin Bamborough (Assistant editor, then commissioning editor for Film On Four, 1981-91) hosted by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Transnational Japan in Hollywood
Samuel Fuller combines two favourite topics, crime and GIs, with this gangster film involving crooked ex-soldiers organising a syndicate in occupied Japan.
With an intro by co-curator Yuriko Hamaguchi.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
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.
With an intro by film writer and historian Pamela Hutchinson and live music accompaniment by Stephen Horne.
part of Masumura x Wakao
The festival closes with the UK premiere of Yasuzō Masumura’s impassioned drama, which acts as a fierce critique of Japanese society.
With an intro by Rayna Denison, Professor of Film and Digital Arts and Head of Department for Film and Television at the Unversity of Bristol.
part of A Michael Haneke Season
Austrian auteur Michael Haneke places social tensions and cultural neuroses under the microscope with characteristic precision.
With an introduction by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Reframing Film
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.
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
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.
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
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.
The Opening Keynote is being presented in Cinema 1, which will be live-streamed to Cinema 2.
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
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.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
A young boy comes of age amid a challenging upbringing in this sensitive emblem of 1970s New German cinema.
With an introductory chat with Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator: Film at HOME in Manchester.
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
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.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by co-curator Abiba Coulibaly.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction from Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator: Film at HOME in Manchester.
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by curator with Niyaz Saghari, co-director Matevž Jerman and graphic designer Jan Virant.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by co-curators Bruno Castro and Carlota Matos.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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?
With an introduction by film curator Selina Robertson and a Q&A with director Stephanie Rothman joining us remotely.
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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).
With an introduction and post-screening Q&A with Alpe-Adria Underground! co-director Matevž Jerman (Slovenian Cinematheque) and graphic designer Jan Virant hosted by curator Niyaz Saghari.
Please note: The following short in this series contains flashing imagery: Ljubezen na prvi pogled (Love at First Sight).
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by producer Lynda Myles and a pre-recorded conversation with Gabriel Byrne hosted by season curator and Cinema Rediscovered founder Mark Cosgrove.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an intro by Dr Omar Ahmed (Freelance Film Scholar & International Curator of South Asian Cinema and Founder of The Cloud Door).
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by film curator and event producer, Rosie Beattie.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Charles Burnett’s pioneering account of blue-collar existence paved the way for African American representation on the big screen.
With an introduction by writer/curator Karen Alexander.
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by producer and researcher Andy Robson.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
After being betrayed by her husband, Leonor embarks on a quest for self-discovery and begins to live new experiences.
With an introduction by co-curator Amina Ferley Yael (Cinema Mentiré).
part of Reframing Film
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
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.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by co-curator Ellisha Izumi.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
17th-century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, defies social expectations, becoming a renowned intellectual and writer during the Spanish Inquisition.
With an introduction by co-curator Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha (Cinema Mentiré).
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by curator Cressida Williams.
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by actor Lucy Sheen hosted by film curator Andy Willis.
Please note: This event took place in July 2025
Waterside 1, Watershed
Made on the Moon is happy to host a friendly post-screening gathering that bridges the community of East and South East Asian creatives and the wider audience together to discuss the film Ping Pong.
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an in-person introduction and discussion with film director Stephen Frears, actor Gordon Warnecke and a remote contribution from writer Hanif Kureishi hosted by Cinema Rediscovered’s Mark Cosgrove.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an intro by writer, curator and broadcaster Adam Murray (Bristol Black Horror Club)
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction from curator André Sirangelo.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
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.
With an introduction by film curator Isabel Moir and Selina Robertson.
part of Restored & Rediscovered
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Marianne Basler shines as a Parisian sex worker looking for an authentic connection in this moving drama of identity and class consciousness.
With an introduction by film writer and critic Christina Newland.
part of Masumura x Wakao
Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Yasuzō Masumura adapts Junichiro Tanizaki’s story as a visually arresting story of sexually charged vengeance.
With an intro by Rayna Denison, Professor of Film and Digital Arts and Head of Department for Film and Television at the University of Bristol.
