The Many Strands of Cinema Rediscovered
Back for a third year, the ever-expanding Cinema Rediscovered brings a packed programme of rarities and restorations to the Watershed – and beyond to Clevedon’s historic Curzon cinema – from Thur 26-Sun 29 July. Here’s our handy guide to its various strands.
Bristol UNESCO City of Film
Last November, Bristol joined Bradford, Sydney, Galway, Sofia, Santos and Qingdao in being named a UNESCO Creative City of Film. This ain’t a designation like the European City of Culture, which we’d have to reliquish after a year, allowing the publicty caravan and all the lovely loot it brings to move on to its next destination. So we’ll be a Creative City of Film forever more. To celebrate, Cinema Rediscovered brings Bristol-born director Mike Hodges back to the city for Q&As after screenings of two of his films. Seventies crime classic Get Carter needs no introduction, but Hodges’ follow-up, which reunited him with star Michael Caine, has been unfairly overlooked. Released in 1971, Pulp is an enjoyable, knowing private eye parody casting Caine as a pulp fiction writer who’s hired by a Hollywood legend (genuine Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney) to ghostwrite his autobiography. Other highlights in this strand include seven of Aardman’s earliest short films, which have recently been restored in 4K and will be introduced by the studio’s co-founder David Sproxton, and a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Bristol very first Black Pyramid film festival. Should you be in any doubt about our City of Film status, book yourself on to one of the two Bristol Cinema Walks hosted by Dr Peter Walsh for an eye-opening romp through our cine-heritage.
Women on the Periphery
This post-Weinstein celebration of women’s storytelling reminds us that three groundbreaking films all celebrate their 25th anniversaries this year. Back in 1993, Tracey Moffatt’s beDevil was the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman. In the same year, Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. became the first feature directed by an African American woman to secure UK distribution, while over here Gurinder Chadha’s warm-hearted comedy Bhaji on the Beach made history as the first film to be made by a British Asian woman. Leslie Harris will be present in person to talk about her film, while Gurinder Chadha will be participating in a skype Q&A.
Restored and Rediscovered
What it says on the tin: this year’s selection of classics that have been given the full restoration treatment or are celebrating significant anniversaries. The restorations are of Merchant-Ivory’s Maurice, with the young Hugh Grant in his first major role, and a new 4K scan of Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning masterpiece, The Apartment. The Coens’ great The Big Lebowski also gets another welcome 20th anniversary outing.
Bazin 100
“What is cinema?” demanded pioneering French film theorist André Bazin, founder of Cahiers du Cinema and patron saint of the beard-stroking school of film criticism. A huge influence on the French New Wave, Bazin had some very particular ideas about naturalism in film-making and was especially exercised by such disagreeable techniques as montage and expressionism. Christ knows what he’d make of today’s loud, flashy blockbusters. It’s probably a good job he died in 1958. Marking the centenary of his birth, the Bazin 100 strand comprises a bunch of conversations and screenings, ranging from Mark Cousins’ documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles to Jean Renoir’s political satire Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and influential Swedish silent classic The Phantom Carriage. Fascinating Bazin fact: he kept his own bestiary, with a chameleon, several parrots and even a crocodile
Slocombe at Ealing
The late, great British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, whose credits range from Kind Hearts and Coronets to the Indiana Jones flicks, has been a Cinema Rediscovered favourite ever since the event’s inception. This year’s small but perfectly formed Slocombe strand whisks us back to his early work at Ealing Studios for the gorgeously filmed proto-feminist melodrama The Loves of Joanna Godden and Basil Dearden’s sumptuous if rather overlooked costume drama Saraband for Dead Lovers – Slocombe’s first Technicolor film.
Reframing the Archive
For those with an interest in the technical and philosophical side of film preservation, this strand brings together curators and archivists for a series of talks and screenings about their work and how our perspective on the past can be shifted by the ways in which archive material is framed. It kicks off with a keynote speech by Film 2017 co-host Danny Leigh, who is now the Senior Curator of fiction at the BFI National Archive
Workers Unite!
Anniversaries? We gottem! 1968 was such a momentous year that classic albums, bands and films are all queuing up to be celebrated – often with expensive cash-in reissues. But the running dogs of western capitalism should be reminded that 1968 was also the year of youth protest in Paris. The Watershed has been marking this with a series of screenings and now Cinema Rediscovered joins in with a brace of suitably revolutionary events. Bourgeois bottoms will be punished with the restored version of Fassbinder’s eight-hour TV drama about a working class German family, Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day. Over at Clevedon’s imperialist-era Curzon, they’re showing Bill Douglas’s Tolpuddle Martyrs drama, Comrades. Should you wish to make a day of it, there’s also a proletarian coach trip from Bristol, which includes a guided tour of the decadent picture palace.
Follow the links below for more information and trailers, where available, for all screenings in each strand. Visit the Cinema Rediscovered website for details of related talks, discussions, tours and other events.
