The full line-up of screenings of newly restored films including 15 UK Premieres, rediscoveries and film-on-film rarities, cinema walks, a quiz and a multitude of starting points for lively conversation is now live for Cinema Rediscovered 2024.

You can expect a friendly space for all to share passions and enthusiasms for film at cinemas including Watershed, 20th Century Flicks, Clevedon’s Curzon Cinema & Arts, The Cube Microplex and Bristol Aquarium Cinema, which holds the former IMAX cinema.  

The festival opens with two UK Premieres of brand new 4K restorations featuring iconic cinematic stars; Gilda (1946) Charles Vidor’s sultry film noir of lust and greed which propelled Rita Hayworth to eternal film stardom, marking one hundred years of Columbia Pictures and Le Samouraï  (1967) - directed by Jean Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon in a performance which redefined cinematic cool. 

Our closing film is Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece of Ukrainian Poetic Cinema coinciding with the centenary of his birth (a brand new restoration by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project straight from Il Cinema Ritrovato), screening alongside The Colour of Pomegranates (1968), the film that Martin Scorsese compared to,

‘opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed’.  

In between, there are several UK premieres of new restorations including John Sayles’ Oscar-nominated Lone Star (1996) (with a remote introduction by John Sayles and Maggie Renzi); Wim Wenders’ luminescent Paris, Texas (1984) following its premiere at Cannes and 40 years after it won the Palme d’Or; an 80th birthday tribute to the pioneering African-American filmmaker Charles Burnett, featuring a screening of his long-lost feature The Annihilation of Fish (1999); Taiwanese director Edward Yang’s Mahjong (1996), screening alongside A Confucian Confusion (1994); both presented by writer and critic Ian Wang. 

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

Cinema Rediscovered Founder Mark Cosgrove Founder presents Out of Their Depth: Corruption, Scandal and Lies in the New Hollywood, including 50th anniversary screenings of a trio of titles from the vintage year that was 1974; new restorations of The Parallax View and The Conversation, and a rare 35mm showing of Chinatown (1974). 

This year, we are also proud to be collaborating with an inspiring range of up-and-coming co-curators as part of Other Ways of Seeing, a development opportunity supported by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery; including a retrospective on Montreal-based indigenous storyteller Jeff Barnaby (1976 – 2022); a programme of Queer Cinema From the Eastern Bloc; Brazil’s first horror film At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and a rare 35mm showing of The Student Nurses (1970) by Stephanie Rothman, the first woman to direct a Roger Corman production. 

And, closer to home, there are two 4K restorations of films by the Bristol-born, Oscar® and BAFTA nominated director J. Lee Thompson presented by writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet and special guest actor Melvyn Hayes; The Weak and The Wicked (1954) and No Trees in The Street(1959); both featuring strong performances from two recently lost British female leads: Bristol-educated Glynis Johns and Sylvia Sims.  

And much more... Get exploring!

We recommend you book early to avoid disappointment. Festival Passes are available allowing you to choose from more than 50 events at £120 full / £100 concessions / £80 24 and under. 

• Booking is now open for Early Bird Passholders. General Festival Passholders will be able to book from Wed 12 June.  
• General ticket sales and multi-ticket packages will begin from Fri 14 June but if you want to book before then you can buy a Pass now. 
• The festival will be followed from August on by a UK and Ireland-wide highlights tour. 
• To stay up to date with festival news, find Cinema Rediscovered on Facebook, Instagram, or X keep a watch on watershed.co.uk/cinema-rediscovered or sign-up for the e-newsletter.  

Cinema Rediscovered is a Watershed production. Its principal funders and sponsors are BFI awarding funds from the National Lottery, Park Circus and STUDIOCANAL. 

---