Restored & Rediscovered
Cinema Rediscovered 2023
Please note : this season finished in July 2023
Experience some of the latest new restorations and rediscoveries on the big screen. This year we open the Festival with a new 4K restoration of The Virgin Suicides (1999), the film which confirmed Sofia Coppola as a director of note, and launched the career of Kirsten Dunst; plus a new 4K restoration of the original cut of Stanley Kubrick’s first feature film Fear & Desire (1953). We then close the Festival with the restoration of Bushman (1971), a poetic mix of fact and fiction about a young Nigerian student’s odyssey through San Francisco life.
In between, there’s plenty more in store, including a seductive dive into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei in Hou Hsiao-Sien’s Millennium Mambo (2001); Seijun Suzuki’s brutally hilarious Branded To Kill (1967) screening at Bristol Aquarium (formerly known as the IMAX cinema) with Film Noir UK, the world premiere of BFI’s restoration of Lorenza Mazzetti’s lyrical centrepiece of Free Cinema, Together (1956) and Antonio Carlos da Fontoura’s outrageously funky and stylish cult classic of Brazilian Queer cinema, The Devil Queen (1974).
In between, there’s plenty more in store, including a seductive dive into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei in Hou Hsiao-Sien’s Millennium Mambo (2001); …
Previous screenings & events in this season
UK Premiere: Bushman
classified 12A Restored & RediscoveredA radical view of the cultural and social upheavals of the late 1960s America from an African perspective.
One Hand Don’t Clap
classified 12A Restored & RediscoveredCalypso music is celebrated in all its beauty in this restored documentary featuring legends such as Calypso Rose and Lord Kitchener.
Undercurrent (Yoru No Kawa)
classified 15 S Restored & RediscoveredA kimono designer in 1950s Kyoto is caught between two worlds in this riveting melodrama.
The Devil Queen (A Rainha Diaba)
classified 18 S Restored & RediscoveredA cult classic of Brazilian Queer cinema, this outrageously funky and stylish crime film infuriated the Brazilian military dictatorship at the time.
UK Premiere: Millennium Mambo
classified 15 PS Restored & RediscoveredA hazy, neon-splattered descent through modern Taipei at night-time, thrumming with techno, alcohol and ennui.
Eve’s Bayou
classified 15 Restored & RediscoveredDrawing on Creole folklore, and the stories that arose out of her childhood, Kasi Lemmons’s debut is a bewitching Southern Gothic tale.
Salomé
classified 12A Restored & RediscoveredForgotten at the time, this extravagant production of Salomé is now one of the great feminist films.
Brick & Mirror
classified 18 S Restored & RediscoveredA Teherani taxi driver finds an abandoned baby in the back seat of his cab, journeying through the city in a vain attempt to find the infant’s mother.
Branded to Kill
classified 18 S Restored & RediscoveredOn the director’s centenary year, rediscover this wild and trippy blast of Japanese genre cinema!
UK Premiere: Twilight (Szürkület)
classified 15 Restored & RediscoveredHighly praised but little seen, this stark murder mystery rips the police procedural film apart.
The Passionate Stranger with Carol Morley
classified PG Restored & RediscoveredBlack and white collides with Technicolor fantasy in Muriel Box’s romantic comedy, poking fun at the wish fulfilment behind cinematic romances.
Deaf Conversations About Cinema: Together
Restored & RediscoveredJoin us at the 13:35 screening of Together on Fri 28 July which will feature BSL interpreters to describe any sounds or dialogue that form part of the film. After the screening please joins us, from 14:30, for a post-screening discussion in the Café & Bar. The discussion will be hosted by Deaf artist, performer and filmmaker David Ellington and will feature BSL interpretation throughout.
UK Premiere: The Mother and the Whore
classified 18 S Restored & RediscoveredA searing, compassionate three-and-a-half-hour exploration of relationships in the May ’68 sexual revolution's aftermath.
World Premiere: Together
classified 12A Restored & RediscoveredA pair of Deaf dock workers struggle to make ends meet in London’s East End in Lorenza Mazzetti’s lyrical centrepiece of Free Cinema.
World Premiere: Together With Lorenza Mazzetti
classified 12A Restored & RediscoveredBased on interviews with Mazzetti shortly before her death in 2020, this documentary reclaims her position as a key artist of post-war Europe.
UK Premiere: Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive
classified 18 S Restored & RediscoveredNewly restored, Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive is a stylistically daring and vibrant pulp trip through 1990s Hong Kong.
UK Premiere: The Long Farewell
classified 15 S Restored & RediscoveredA radical, elliptical tale of a mother-and-son drifitng apart, Muratova’s underseen classic is a refreshingly challenging cinematic work.
UK Premiere: Brief Encounters
classified 15 S Restored & RediscoveredMuratova’s debut solo feature is an impressionistic dissection of a love triangle in freefall, which was banned by Soviet censors for twenty years until the advent of perestroika.
UK Premiere: Fear & Desire
classified 12 Restored & RediscoveredA new 4K restoration of the original 1953 cinema release print of Kubrick’s debut feature film which he subsequently cut following negative audience response.
UK Premiere: The Virgin Suicides
classified 15 Restored & RediscoveredSofia Coppola’s debut feature is a melancholic, dreamy vision that marked her out as a distinctive new voice in cinema.