Watershed

Join some of the most inspiring voices in repertory and archive film exhibition and distribution to explore ways of connecting with a new wave of cinema goers.

In her keynote speech for this year’s Cinema Rediscovered, film writer and critic Christina Newland will explore the questions around the thorny films we might love, and way the films which touch on moral grey areas are sometimes most interesting to discuss.

Cinema 1

Rita Hayworth stamped her name forever in film stardom with this sultry film noir revolving around lust and greed, screening newly restored on this 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures.

Cinema 1 and Cinema 3

Alain Delon is the peak of cinematic cool in Jean-Pierre Melville’s icy hitman thriller presented here in a brand new 4K restoration.

Cinema 3

Join influential film festival programmer, producer and author Lynda Myles for this special screening of Mark Cousins' insight into her cinematic adventures.

Cinema 1

Ninón Sevilla’s film debut the very year she arrived in Mexico from her native Cuba.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join author, critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson and film critic and journalist Christina Newland for insights into the highs and lows of the journey of Rita Hayworth.

Cinema 3

Festival programmer, producer and author Lynda Myles presents this special screening of Francesco Rosi’s gripping exploration of the enigmas of power and corruption.

Cinema 1

An upper middle class woman falls into an erotic underworld of lust and betrayal in a musical/noir film that catapulted Ninón Sevilla to stardom after her debut in film in 1946.

Cinema 1

Nominated for an Oscar® for its masterful screenplay, this American indie landmark from John Sayles lays bare the fault lines of life at the Tex-Mex border.

Cinema 2

A coming-of-age comedy-drama about three African American women living in Brooklyn who navigate standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights women have over their bodies.

Cinema 3

An extravagant film noir set in Mexico City’s red-light district nightclubs, starring sensationally versatile diva Ninón Sevilla, known as ‘The Golden Venus’.

Café & Bar, Watershed

We are delighted to be hosting a special Deaf Conversations About Cinema event as part of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Join Queer Vision, Queer Cinema From the Eastern Block co-curator Siavash Minoukadeh and friends for an informal get together before the screening of Coming Out.

Cinema 1

Four nursing students navigate the political and social turmoil of 1970s LA in this ensemble drama by Stephanie Rothman, the first woman to direct a Roger Corman production.

Cinema 3

A powerful story of love and self-acceptance set in East Germany, originally released on the night the Berlin Wall fell, and way ahead of its time in its approach to queer identities.

Cinema 3

We team up with the Women’s Film Preservation Fund to present a trio of shorts by one of the first American indie women filmmakers to emerge from the Second Wave Feminist Film Women's Movement, Liane Brandon.

Cinema 2

An unflinching portrait of young men in the military pushed to their limits by officers yet finding tenderness and comfort in each other.

Cinema 1

A poetic documentary following Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s journey through Iran in 1951 on a film assignment for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Take part in a free get together, an opportunity to connect with each other and record your stories and responses to Liane Brandon's films.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Find out how a festival like Cinema Rediscovered is programmed by joining a discussion with some of the festival curators who will share their insight, thinking and journey and discuss how to get involved.

Cinema 1

A 50th Anniversary screening of Alan J. Pakula’s ominous vision of America – captured in the wake of the assassination of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King and just before the scandal of Watergate is about to break.

Cinema 2

The clash of sexuality and politics provides the basis for this political drama exploring the effect totalitarianism has on the most intimate aspects of life.

Cinema 3

Cinephilia itself becomes an act of resistance in Ehsan Khoshbakht’s moving account of preserving banned 35mm films in post-Revolutionary Iran.

Cinema 1

Béla Tarr gazes into the abyss with his dark vision of a society over run by disorder and mob rule.

Cinema 3

The classic Raymond Chandler novel is given a laid-back satirical cinematic twist.

Waterside 3 Event Space, Watershed

A panel exploring the ethical and moral questions opened up by the inclusion of Roman Polanski's Chinatown in this year's festival.

Cinema 3

Edward Yang finds humour and pathos in a group of lost and lonely twenty-somethings in Taiwan with wit, warmth, and good humour.

Cinema 1

A rare chance to experience this classic of New Hollywood, which pierces straight to the heart of American darkness, on 35mm on its 50th anniversary.

Cinema 2

When a First Nation community finds itself facing an infectious zombie outbreak, their immunity turns the tables on colonialism as settlers head to the reservation to seek sanctuary.

Opposite Everyman Bristol

Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller and historian and academic Dr Peter Walsh for one of two gentle walks which will take you from the 1880s to the present day to find the landmarks and personalities of cinema in central Bristol.

Projection Rooms, Watershed

Join BFI National Archive Curator Rosie Taylor on a tour of Watershed’s projection booth and discover how the films screening at the festival make it to the screen during a festival like Cinema Rediscovered.

Cinema 1

Join us somewhere over the rainbow and follow Dorothy and her little dog Toto as they are whisked away from their home in Kansas, set on a magical journey down the yellow brick road.

Cinema 3

An irreverent sweep through some of the well-known, and not-so-well-known events and people that shaped Bristol.

Cinema 2

A rare opportunity to see Jeff Barnaby’s iconic short films on the big screen, followed by a discussion on his life, work and legacy.

Cinema 1

A crime comedy from Taiwanese master Edward Yang that doubles as another of his many love letters to Taipei.

Bristol Aquarium Cinema (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Experience Wim Wenders’s unconventional American road movie, one of the most iconic films of the 1980s, newly restored on Bristol’s biggest screen.

The Cube Microplex (about 20 min walk from Watershed)

A delightful, musical, magical realist fable through the heartlands of India that will have you dancing out of the cinema.

Cinema 3

A timeless tale of an artist both blessed and cursed by genius, featuring an almost entirely Asian cast including film star and producer Sessue Hayakawa.

Cinema 2

The debut feature from Mi’gmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, this is a dystopian tale of revenge in mid-1970s Québec.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Join us after the UK Premiere: Mahjong for a pop-up Mahjong Game Session in Waterside 1, hosted by Monica Wat, Hong Kong-born artist and founder of East & South East Asian creative collective Made on the Moon and its annual event MOON FEST.

Cinema 3

A moving documentary about the story of the extraordinary friendship between Scottish filmmaker Bill Douglas and his lifelong friend and collaborator Peter Jewell.

Cinema 1

Charles Burnett’s heart-warming romantic comedy sees two great actors pair off against each other with hilarious results.

Bristol Aquarium Cinema (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Fifty years after its release, Francis Ford Coppola’s thriller now feels prophetic in its portrait of surveillance culture.

20th Century Flicks Videodrome and 20th Century Flicks Kino

Mutated piranhas terrorise a summer resort in this classic B movie from legendary producer Roger Corman.

Cinema 3

This 1989 Sundance winner is a bittersweet comedy about getting cold feet at the altar.

Cinema 1

The search for a missing teenage girl leads to a devastating emotional reckoning in this 1970s film noir starring Gene Hackman.

Cinema 3

The first film from the former Yugoslavia to openly depict LGBTQ+ characters Marble Ass remains one of Želimir Žilnik’s most enduring works, even more brilliant for its open acts of love and positivity at a time of such misery.

Bristol Aquarium Cinema (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Once seen, never forgotten! Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) makes his screen debut in José Mojica Marins’ At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, the first Brazilian-produced horror film.

College Green Bus Stop

Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller and historian and academic Dr Peter Walsh for one of two gentle walks which will take you from the 1880s to the present day to find the landmarks and personalities of cinema in central Bristol.

Cinema 2

Original and powerful in his artistic vision, Bill Douglas’s three short films My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978) are weaved together through the journey of Jamie.

Cinema 3

A C.I.A operative cannot trust anyone when their world is turn upside down in Sydney Pollacks tense political thriller.

Cinema 1

A sobering and empathetic exploration of life in a women’s prison, made at a time when notions of rehabilitation were still uncommon.

Cinema 1

The tender adventure of a very unconventional family who bring cinema magic to the people of Venezuela.

Cinema 3

Crime is beauty in the rabid whirlwind of John Waters’ Female Trouble – the naughty middle-child in his opus “Trash Trilogy”, which celebrates its 50th birthday.

Curzon Cinema & Arts (about 45 min bus journey from Watershed)

The film that Martin Scorsese compared to ‘opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed’.

Cinema 1

Filmed in off-season Capri, this little-known debut by Italian director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi inspired Bill Douglas.

Cinema 3

Sylvia Syms stars in this underseen thriller, laced with hard-bitten kitchen sink realism.

Cinema 1

Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece of Ukrainian Poetic Cinema unleashes the full breadth of his remarkable visual imagination via a simple Romeo and Juliet story.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Drawing on movie trivia from every decade of film history and executed with a dash of joy and wit, the Cinema Rediscovered Film Quiz is designed to reward film knowledge while encouraging good times.