Cinema Rediscovered unveils its 2022 programme

Bristol’s irresistible celebration of film restorations and rarities from around the globe is back for its sixth year. Cinema Rediscovered opens on July 20 with the UK premiere of the brand new 4K restoration of David Lynch’s enigmatic and frankly baffling Lost Highway.

Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in ‘Harold and Maude’. Pic: Park Circus/Paramount

It closes four days later with another 4K restoration: Kinuyo Tanaka’s powerful 1955 drama Forever a Woman. There are 12 premieres along the way, including the new restoration of Hal Ashby’s classic Harold and Maude.

Prepare to clutch your pearls: it’s Joan Blondell in 1931’s ‘Blonde Crazy’ – one of the pre-Code films that broke all the rules. Pic: WBEI.

This year’s festival boasts multiple fascinating themed strands. In Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules Are Made to be Broken, film writers and critics Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland present 4K restorations of some of Hollywood’s most risqué films, which were made before the Hays Code imposed censorship in the early 1930s to protect your great-grandparents’ morals.

Josephine Baker and Albert Prejean in ‘Princess Tam-Tam’

Curator Karen Alexander presents two programmes this year. Black Paris… Josephine and Beyond explores the experiences and work of black filmmakers in the French capital. It includes a screening of George Eastman House’s restoration of the, ahem, ‘problematic’ 1935 film Princess Tam-Tam. This does the Pygmalion thing, casting the great Josephine Baker as a Tunisian beggar who’s passed off as an exotic princess in high society Paris.

The resolutely lower case bell hooks

Karen also revisits the writing of the late feminist cultural theorist bell hooks (her lower case), particularly her ground-breaking Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies.

Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’. Pic: Park Circus/Paramount

When Europe Made Hollywood explores how European filmmakers and stars influenced and shaped Hollywood in front and behind the camera, from Sunrise (1927) to High Noon (1952).

Venezuelan documentary ‘Araya’ (1959) – screening as part of the Women’s Stories from the Global South strand

In Women’s Stories from the Global South (& To Whom They Belong), Mosa Mpetha (Black Cinema Project, Hyde Park Picture House) and the Ajabu Ajabu collective explore issues of ownership and the imbalance of power within film cultures, with a focus on five women’s stories from around the world.

A scene from ‘Laws of Love’

Other discoveries for 2022 include one of the world’s first pro-gay documentaries. Filmmaker and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld had the misfortune to be both gay and Jewish in Nazi Germany and his ground-breaking 1927 film Laws of Love (Gesetze der Liebe) was believed lost for decades. It has now been painstakingly restored to his original vision by the Munich Film Museum.

Samira Ahmed delivers this year’s Philip French Memorial Lecture

This year’s Philip French Memorial Lecture is delivered by journalist, writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed, who now counts as something of a Cinema Rediscovered regular, having presented events in 2017 and 2018.

Martin Balsam, Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck in Bristol-born J. Lee Thompson’s ‘Cape Fear’. Pic: Park Circus/Universal

Let’s hear it for local-talent too. Bristol-born J. Lee Thompson directed many great films (and, er, Death Wish 4). This year the focus is on his original 1962 version of Cape Fear, with Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, which gets a 60th anniversary screening.

Elga Brink and Weston-super-Mare’s very own Henry Edwards in ‘The Joker’ (not that one)

Little remembered today, Weston-super-Mare’s very own Henry Edwards was a popular leading man in his time. South West Silents bring him back to the big screen with a screening of The Joker. Steady, Batman enthusiasts. This is a 1928 romcom in which our hero plays a jolly japester who saves a society lady from a dastardly blackmailing lawyer.

Cinema Rediscovered 2022 runs from July 20-22 at the Watershed, Arnolfini, Curzon and 20th Century Flicks. Early bird festival passes go on sale at 10am on Tuesday.

For tickets and more information, visit www.watershed.co.uk/cinema-rediscovered

Main image: Patricia Arquette in ‘Lost Highway’. All photos supplied by Cinema Rediscovered.

Read more: 27 things to do in Bristol this week, May 16-22 2022

Listen to the latest Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: