Site and Sound

Back in March 2016, the Bristol Film Festival was launched upon an unsuspecting city. It wasn’t envisaged as one of those festivals with gala premieres, red carpets packed with celebrities and glittering awards ceremonies. Instead, the festival’s founder and director Owen Franklin planned an imaginative series of immersive screenings in novel venues, including a programme of horror flicks in Redcliffe Caves. “The ethos is that, no matter what event you go to, it makes you engage with film in a way that you might not have done before,” he told Bristol 24/7 at the time.

“We didn’t have any ambition beyond getting through that first weekend,” Owen confesses today. He needn’t have worried. The Festival immediately caught the public imagination and expanded rapidly with screenings at venues as diverse as the RWA, SS Great Britain, Redcliffe Caves, Bristol Cathedral, the City Museum and Averys wine cellar. Now  it’s become a year-round celebration, divided into four seasons comprising more than 80 events, billed as “the UK’s largest immersive film festival”.

But rather than resting on its laurels, the festival continues to forge ahead with new ideas and screening venues. On March 8, Aerospace Bristol at Filton hosts a screening of classic comedy Airplane! beneath Concorde, in an event that will also permit punters to nose around the iconic pointy plane. “Aerospace Bristol have been very supportive since the first festival,” says Owen. “We always speak to the people who run venues rather than simply hiring them as spaces. Together, we drew up a shortlist of films, but Airplane! stood out as such a perfect choice. Everyone knows it.” Should this prove a success, as it undoubtedly will, there’s a mixed bag of films that actually feature Concorde to draw on next time, from the Bond classic Moonraker to the very worst of the Airport series: The Concorde: Airport ’79.

Also being used for first time is The Island, which was formally Bridewell Police Station. Where better to screen a programme of law’n’order-related films than in the large holding cell in the basement? Take your pick from The Shawshank Redemption, Hot Fuzz, Escape from Alcatraz and Bronson – all screened on March 11. Owen observes that this diverse selection also illustrates strength of the immersive experience. “You might struggle to persuade people to go an see a film like Bronson in a cinema, but they will want to come and see it in a jail cell.”

Programmes at regular venues are also being tweaked to keep them fresh. Initially, booze-fuelled screenings at Averys were of the oenophile-oriented likes of Sideways, but now broader palates are being catered for with Little Miss Sunshine (March 9) and classic noir The Third Man (March 10). Similarly, while the Horror in the Caves series has proven one of the festival’s most popular attractions (and will return in the autumn), the spring weekend in Redcliffe Caves from March 9-11 is a more wide-ranging celebration of ‘underground cinema’, including The Raid, Pulp Fiction, Donnie Darko, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Mulholland Drive, Raw, Brazil and two screenings of the ever-popular Labyrinth (y’know – David Bowie sporting a silly wig and performing some of his most awful songs).

Elsewhere, you can catch John Huston’s The African Queen at the RWA (March 6) and This Is Spinal Tap at The Station (March 15). Owen is reluctant to give any hints about other venues he’s in negotiation with for future events, but acknowledges that this process has become a lot easier now the festival is woven into the city’s cultural fabric: “People are already approaching us with ideas for 2019, which is fantastic.”

Before that, the festival has three more seasons in 2018, with plans being laid for a ‘winterfest’ at Christmas and a Halloween horror blowout. The summer series will bring another innovation: a focus on local independent film in June. This follows on from last year’s collaboration with Knowle West Media Centre to screen a selection of short films produced by the From Her P.O.V. project aimed at nurturing women filmmakers. “That was a huge success,” says Owen “But we’re keen for the local filmmaking programme not to be seen as an adjunct to the main immersive programme, so we’re working on ways to make it an attraction in itself.”