If you want to see women centre-stage and expressing their own desires, or criminals so charming you’ll pray they get away with the loot, step this way...

Co-curated by film writers and critics Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland, Cinema Rediscovered's Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules are Made to be Broken features five sparkling new remasters of some of Tinseltown’s most risqué films, all made before the 1930’s Hays Code was enforced.

Before the Hollywood censors decided to enforce the rules around sexuality, violence, drugs and hard living, a group of films we now call the Pre-Codes tested the boundaries by breaking every single one of them. And just as the gangsters and gold-diggers on-screen raised eyebrows by profiting from their nefarious deeds, cinema was enriched by some of the wittiest, wildest and most audaciously enjoyable movies Hollywood has ever made.

With support from BFI awarding funds from National Lottery, and in collaboration with Park Circus, Warner Bros the Pre-Code Hollywood package features: Blonde Crazy (1931), A Free Soul (1931), Jewel Robbery (1932), Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Baby Face (1933.)

Following its launch at this year's festival – the package is now available to book from Park Circus for cinemas from August onwards.

Watch season co-curators Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland for insights into Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules are Made to be Broken | Season Talk

A focus on five women’s stories from Morocco, Cuba, Venezuela, Angola and Tanzania.

Curatorial collaborators Mosa Mpetha (Black Cinema Project, Hyde Park Picture House), Darragh Amelia and Jesse Gerard (Ajabu Ajabu) present five recently digitised or restored works from the Global South that are written by and about women. Surrounding each film from this selection exists a uniquely challenging story of ownership and distribution, opening up discussion around the imbalance of power within film cultures perpetuated globally and locally. The strand includes Sambizanga the first film by a woman to be restored by the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the FEPACI and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – presented in person at Cinema Rediscovered by Annouchka De Andrade, daughter of director Sarah Maldoror.

Titles include: Door to the Sky (Morocco, 1989), De Cierta Manera (Cuba, 1974-77), Araya (Venezuela, 1959), Maangazimi: The Ancient One (Tanzania, 2001) and from Angola Sambizanga (1971).

Launching at this year's festival – the package is now available to book for cinemas from August onwards from cinema.rediscovered@watershed.co.uk

An exploration of how European filmmakers shaped American popular film.

When Europe Made Hollywood explores some of the European influences which shaped Hollywood.

From directors such as F.W. Murnau (German) and Michael Curtiz (Hungarian), and actresses Marlene Dietrich (German) and Greta Garbo (Swedish), who were courted by the American studios because of their success in the cinema of 1920s Europe; through to directors like Billy Wilder (Austrian) and Robert Siodmak (German) who were forced into exile to escape the rise of fascism in the 1930s.  All of these European talents made an indelible mark on this most American of popular art forms. And all helped to create some of Hollywood’s most distinctive and enduring films; works which reflected a more complex world than the popular myth of Hollywood would have us believe. 

The strand, curated by Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove in collaboration with Park Circus and Invisible Women includes the following titles: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), Shanghai Express (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Fury (1936), Casablanca (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Killers (1946) and a 4K restoration of High Noon (1952) on its 70th anniversary.

The festival continues its collaboration with MUBI, with the UK big screen premiere of the 4K restoration by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Image Retrouvee Laboratory (Paris) of Mohammad Reza Aiani’s Chess of The Wind (1976) which is now streaming on the platform

MUBI also presents the English premiere of One Second (2020), Zhang Yimou’s long-delayed ode to cinema’s power as both a conduit for emotions and a tool for propaganda ahead of its streaming premiere on MUBI on 16 September 2022.