Café & Bar, Watershed

Look out for a selection of archive shorts curated by South West Silents’ James Harrison as part of Opening Up the Magic Box which marks the centenary of the death of Bristol-born Victorian cinema innovator William Friese-Greene.

Arnolfini

Born in Bristol in 1855, William Friese-Greene began producing photographic images for John Rudge's magic lanterns in 1880. Breaking both his photographic partnership with Arthur Collings and his marriages to Helena and Edith, William Friese-Greene sacrificed everything in a bid to produce a machine that could record and produce motion pictures.

Online

As we mark the centenary of his death, Peter Domankiewicz and Sir Christopher Frayling reassess the place of William Friese-Greene – Bristol-born photographer, inventor and pioneer of cinematography – in cinema history.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Perry Henzell's follow-up to The Harder They Come went unseen as the negative was thought lost for over 25 years. Found and restored, this road movie through Jamaica is the memorable last testament of an undeniably great filmmaker.

Cinema 3, Watershed

A colourful travelogue by Claude Friese-Greene (son of William) filmed during the summer of 1924 from Land’s End to John O’Groats with live piano accompaniment by Neil Brand.

Cinema 1, Watershed

A star-studded cast of African-American musical and acting talent from Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr and Ossie Davis, A Man Called Adam is also the debut feature for Lola Falana and the late Cicely Tyson.

Online

Wind down and rediscover the movie trivia hidden in the recesses of your brain with a special Cinema Rediscovered Film Quiz from the comfort of your home via YouTube.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Wind down and rediscover the movie trivia hidden in the recesses of your brain with a special Cinema Rediscovered Film Quiz.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Author, critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson will explore the role of film critics in rethinking and reframing film heritage and the importance of looking back to understand and explore what’s happening in film culture right now.

Cinema 1, Watershed

At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments.

Online

Some of the most distinctive voices in film curation and archiving come together to explore the potential of reframing film heritage.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Sparse dialogue, rugged landscapes, masculine spectacles and disco dancing - Claire Denis loosely adapts and updates Herman Melville’s Billy Budd to take place in a French Foreign Legion outpost in East Africa.

Zoom

Discover how film and media archives are collecting history as it happens. We talk to the BFI National Archive about collecting online video content, television, and their explorations into preserving VR.

Cinema 2, Watershed

What might an alternative history of cinema, one with the women in it, really look like? Archive activists Invisible Women speak to writers Helen O’Hara, Simran Hans and Pamela Hutchinson about reimagining female centric film criticism.

Online

What might an alternative history of cinema, one with the women in it, really look like? Archive activists Invisible Women speak to writers Helen O’Hara, Simran Hans and Pamela Hutchinson about reimagining female centric film criticism in this Zoom discussion.

Cinema 1, Watershed

With its fascinating morally ambiguous characters, evocative cinematography by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, and haunting use of Leonard Cohen songs, Robert Altman’s anti-western McCabe and Mrs Miller brilliantly reframed the entrenched values of the Western genre.

20th Century Flicks (about 9 min walk from Watershed)

Film programmer, writer, critic and broadcaster Adam Murray pays homage to actor Yaphet Kotto with a special showing of Blue Collar (1978), an uncompromising tale of three-working men starring Kotto as Smokey James alongside double trouble Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Shot in gorgeous atmospheric widescreen, this is one of the most un-Hollywood films ever made by Hollywood. Directed by maverick director Monte Hellman (who recently passed away), it remains a timeless, existential portrait of lives in transit and of a country questioning its identity.

20th Century Flicks (about 9 min walk from Watershed)

Join Bristol Black Horror Club for their launch event, a rare screening of the late Paul Annett’s 1974 feature-directorial debut for The Beast Must Die, a camp action-horror-hybrid with a twist of country-house-whodunit and Blaxploitation cool.

Cinema 1, Watershed

One of the earliest music documentaries, photographer Bert Stern’s film captures an all-star line-up of performers from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, periodically cutting away to the stylish Rhode Island community.

YouTube

To mark the 50th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s passing in July 1971, Bristol Blues & Jazz Film Festival present a special event to celebrate his legacy and onscreen presence from the late ‘50s to the late 60s.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Set during the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville, this elegy to cinema itself shot in highly evocative black and white focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, Klute  saw Jane Fonda bring counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the centre of a missing-person investigation.

Across Bristol

Join us for a guided tour through the city centre, following in the footsteps of pioneers in photography and motion pictures, and visit the ghosts of lost picture palaces as well as thriving cinemas and film locations of today.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn find that three’s a crowd in the delightful screwball romp, making pointed comedy out of the serious issue of the housing shortage in Washington DC during the first months of World War II.

Cinema 3, Watershed

Writer and Curator Karen Alexander will be in conversation with Mark Cosgrove (Watershed/Cinema Rediscovered Curator) to explore the appeal of Paris to Black Americans and will explore the range and legacy of their creative presence in the city of love.

Zoom

Know your WitchTok from your Cottagecore? Join a panel of experts to explore the emerging trends of Film TikTok and how film fans can best use the platform.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Academy Award® winner Nick Park joins Mark Cosgrove (Watershed / Cinema Rediscovered Curator) for a pre-recorded conversation about some of his earliest work to introduce the world premiere of the restoration of his live action short A Fisherman's Tale.

Cinema 1, Watershed and Cinema 3, Watershed

The UK premiere of the 4K restoration of Melvin Van Peebles’ little known Nouvelle Vague infused debut feature, an edgy, romantic film set in Paris of 1968 inspired by his personal experiences in the United States Air Force.

Arnolfini

Considered by many to be the first film noir, certainly a key title in laying the foundations for that all American genre of mean streets, knife-edged heroes, dark shadows and tough dames, experience John Huston’s debut feature on the big screen on its 80th anniversary, launching Film Noir UK.

Cinema 1, Watershed

Following his breakout turn in Easy Rider, rising star Jack Nicholson gives an extraordinary performance as Bobby Dupea; a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to some kind of reckoning at his upper-middle-class childhood home.