Will the transgressive arthouse staples of yesteryear offend ‘woke’ audiences?
The Italian Job, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Matrix trilogy, Saving Private Ryan, Don’t Look Now, Jaws, Apocalypse Now . . . Barely a week goes by without yet another classic returning to cinemas, often in 4K remastered form and frequently to celebrate an anniversary. This recent explosion of interest in cinematic heritage serves to make Bristol’s Cinema Rediscovered festival seem well ahead of the curve.
But Watershed cinema curator and Cinema Rediscovered co-founder Mark Cosgrove argues that the credit should really go to Bologna’s internationally renowned Il Cinema Ritrovato archive film festival, from which he shamelessly stole the idea. “They were really ahead of the curve. They’ve been going for 30 years and have this huge 5,000 seat outdoor venue. And they get huge audiences. These aren’t older audiences, either. There are plenty of young people.”
He reckons there are two reasons why film studios are helping to drive this renewed interest: “Part of it is the need to look after their heritage. The other way they look at it is, ‘How can we exploit our back catalogue?'”
Another development that can hardly have escaped any cinemagoer in recent years is an ever-growing polarisation, which Spielberg could not have anticipated when he unleashed the very first blockbuster, Jaws, back in 1975. These days, it’s not unusual to find three or four superhero movies slugging it out in the multiplexes, leaving little room for anything else.
“Absolutely,” says Cosgrove. “There are those tentpole blockbusters and then there’s all the rest. The really depressing thing is that the average cinema attendance per person per year in the UK is 2.1. So that’s Avengers: Endgame and Toy Story 4. We’re competing for part of the 0.1. But at the same time, Bristol is blessed with a big cinephile community with a hunger for older repertory films.”
Alice Guy-Blaché: the first known woman filmmaker
Running from Thursday 25 until Sunday 28 July, the fourth annual edition sees Cinema Resdiscovered really hitting its stride with its best and most diverse programme to date. The opening night feature is a premiere of the brand new 4K restoration of Hitchcock’s Notorious. Guests include Terence Davies who’ll be waxing lyrical about Ealing’s blackest comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and Bristol-born Get Carter and Flash Gordon director Mike Hodges, who returns to introduce two of his lesser-known works: Black Rainbow and Croupier. Elsewhere, there’s a focus on Alice Guy-Blaché, the first known woman filmmaker; The Observer‘s Simran Hans delivers this year’s Philip French Memorial Lecture on the future of film criticism; a day trip to Clevedon’s historic Curzon cinema offers an opportunity to feast on Soylent Green; and Adam Murray of Cables & Cameras and Come the Revolution presents two classics of modern black American cinema: Hoop Dreams and Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
Observer film critic Simran Hans
Several key strands are packed with cinematic goodness. Scala Rediscovered celebrates the legendary London repertory cinema whose members included the likes of Christopher Nolan, Ben Wheatley, Carol Morley, Joe Cornish, Peter Strickland and Mark Kermode. Former programmer Jane Giles is coming to talk about her new coffee table tome, Scala Cinema 1978-1993, and there will be screenings of such Scala faves as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s bonkers Santa Sangre and the late Larry Cohen’s killer mutant baby classic It’s Alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpl8bWYk5RU
A welcome focus on the work of the late, great Nic Roeg takes in the rarely screened likes of Eureka and Bad Timing (“a sick film made by sick people for sick people,” according to its own distributor) alongside his better-known films Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Don’t Look Now (another 4K remaster) and Performance.
“I liken him to Michael Powell, whereby there’s an aura around his films but they’re not really shown on a regular basis,” says Mark. “The tributes after his death raised his profile, but I still think there’s a job of work to be done to re-state what an amazing filmmaker he was.”
Then there’s the intriguing Gluttony, Decadence and Resistance strand, packed with bold and transgressive work ranging from Czech new wave classic Fruit of Paradise to Brian Yuzna’s splendidly icky Society and Peter Greenaway’s Thatcher-era cause celebre The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. The Greenaway film serves as a sobering reminder of changing fashion. Back in the 1980s, a new Greenaway was a major event that would have queues round the block at the Watershed. But his films are rarely seen and barely remembered today. “People say, ‘Peter who?'” observes Mark. “But at one point, he was the future of the British film industry.”
Author and former Scala cinema programmer Jane Giles
Speaking of changing attitudes, it’ll also be fascinating to find out what younger ‘woke’ audiences, who’ve been characterised as hypersensitive and censorious pearl-clutchers, make of Cinema Rediscovered’s stronger material, especially the sexual violence in the likes of yesteryear’s arthouse staples Santa Sangre, The Cook, the Thief … and Bad Timing. “Well, that’s what we’re here for – to provoke discussion,” says Mark, though he cautions against such stereotyping, citing the example of The Final Girls – the young feminist collective who celebrate women in horror.
Bristol cinema pioneer William Friese-Greene
Finally, with Bristol now officially a UNESCO City of Film, our claim on being the birthplace of cinema is re-stated in an event celebrating the work of eccentric working class Bristolian pioneer William Friese-Greene. Film director and former Bristol resident Peter Domankiewicz will be presenting the latest fruits of his decades of research into the extraordinary story of this Victorian pioneer. “There’s all sorts of claim and counter-claim,” acknowledges Mark, “but Peter has done some serious research and the results should be fascinating.”
We’ve categorised all the Cinema Rediscovered screenings below. Follow the links for more information and screening times and visit the Cinema Rediscovered website for details of talks and other events.
