Restored & Rediscovered
The Virgin Suicides - Image courtesy of Park Circus and StudioCanal

Restored & Rediscovered

Cinema Rediscovered 2023

Season

Please note : this season finished in July 2023

Experience some of the latest new restorations and rediscoveries on the big screen. This year we open the Festival with a new 4K restoration of The Virgin Suicides (1999), the film which confirmed Sofia Coppola as a director of note, and launched the career of Kirsten Dunst; plus a new 4K restoration of the original cut of Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film Fear & Desire (1953). We then close the Festival with the restoration of Bushman (1971), a poetic mix of fact and fiction about a young Nigerian student’s odyssey through San Francisco life.

In between, there’s plenty more in store, including a seductive dive into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei in Hou Hsiao-Sien’s Millennium Mambo (2001); Seijun Suzuki’s brutally hilarious Branded To Kill (1967) screening at Bristol Aquarium (formerly known as the IMAX cinema) with Film Noir UK, the world premiere of BFI’s restoration of Lorenza Mazzetti’s lyrical centrepiece of Free Cinema, Together (1956) and Antonio Carlos da Fontoura’s outrageously funky and stylish cult classic of Brazilian Queer cinema, The Devil Queen (1974).

In between, there’s plenty more in store, including a seductive dive into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei in Hou Hsiao-Sien’s Millennium Mambo (2001); …


Previous screenings & events in this season

UK Premiere: Bushman

classified 12A Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: Bushman
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

One Hand Don’t Clap

classified 12A Restored & Rediscovered
One Hand Don’t Clap
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

Undercurrent (Yoru No Kawa)

classified 15 S Restored & Rediscovered
Undercurrent (Yoru No Kawa)
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

The Devil Queen (A Rainha Diaba)

classified 18 S Restored & Rediscovered
The Devil Queen (A Rainha Diaba)
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

UK Premiere: Millennium Mambo

classified 15 PS Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: Millennium Mambo
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

Eve’s Bayou

classified 15 Restored & Rediscovered
Eve’s Bayou
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

Drawing on Creole folklore, and the stories that arose out of her childhood, Kasi Lemmons’s debut is a bewitching Southern Gothic tale.

Salomé

classified 12A Restored & Rediscovered
Salomé
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

Brick & Mirror

classified 18 S Restored & Rediscovered
Brick & Mirror
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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.

Branded to Kill

classified 18 S Restored & Rediscovered
Branded to Kill
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

UK Premiere: Twilight (Szürkület)

classified 15 Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: Twilight (Szürkület)
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

The Passionate Stranger with Carol Morley

classified PG Restored & Rediscovered
The Passionate Stranger with Carol Morley
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

World Premiere: Together
Please note: This event took place in July 2023
Talk

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.

UK Premiere: The Mother and the Whore

classified 18 S Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: La Maman et La Putin
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

World Premiere: Together

classified 12A Restored & Rediscovered
World Premiere: Together
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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.

World Premiere: Together With Lorenza Mazzetti

classified 12A Restored & Rediscovered
Together With Lorenza Mazzetti
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

UK Premiere: Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

UK Premiere: The Long Farewell

classified 15 S Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: The Long Farewell
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

UK Premiere: Brief Encounters

classified 15 S Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: Brief Encounters
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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.

UK Premiere: Fear & Desire

classified 12 Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: Fear & Desire
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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.

UK Premiere: The Virgin Suicides

classified 15 Restored & Rediscovered
UK Premiere: The Virgin Suicides
Please note: This was screened in July 2023
Film

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

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