Five things to see at Cinema Rediscovered 2017 | Little White Lies

Festivals

Five things to see at Cin­e­ma Redis­cov­ered 2017

26 Jul 2017

Words by Christina Newland

Two people, a man and a woman, standing in a room with red-orange shelves. The woman is holding a camera and appears to be taking a photograph of the man, who is holding a wooden object.
Two people, a man and a woman, standing in a room with red-orange shelves. The woman is holding a camera and appears to be taking a photograph of the man, who is holding a wooden object.
Jean-Luc Godard’s rad­i­cal ​’60s com­e­dy La Chi­noise is among the high­lights of this year’s festival.

Over the final week­end in July, Cin­e­ma Redis­cov­ered will return for its sec­ond edi­tion, boast­ing a bevy of clas­sics and less­er-known gems from cin­e­ma his­to­ry. Based at Bristol’s Water­shed Cin­e­ma and a hand­ful of oth­er venues across the city, the ret­ro­spec­tive mini-fes­ti­val was found­ed as a British homage to Il Cin­e­ma Ritrova­to in Bologna, and its pro­gramme once again includes films plucked direct­ly from the Ital­ian rep festival.

Of the themes that split up the pro­gramme, the most intrigu­ing is ​‘Manip­u­lat­ing the Mes­sage’, an exam­i­na­tion of truth and the media as por­trayed in the movies, fea­tur­ing clas­sics like Bil­ly Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. Anoth­er, ​‘India on Film’, bor­rows from the BFI Archives to pro­vide rare footage from pre-inde­pen­dence India and a fresh release of Satya­jit Ray’s The Music Room. Here are five things to look for­ward to at Cin­e­ma Redis­cov­ered 2017.

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A great oppor­tu­ni­ty to binge watch 10 hours of tele­vi­sion in the cin­e­ma, Deka­log begins at 9.30am and stretch­es onward through­out the day. Kies­lows­ki based his tale of an urban com­mu­ni­ty in Com­mu­nist-era Poland on – of all things – the 10 Com­mand­ments. Famed for his Three Colours tril­o­gy, Kieslowski’s ear­li­er work has been new­ly restored and this one-off screen­ing is the result. Come for long­form nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing on an incred­i­ble scale. Get tick­ets

Fem­i­nist hor­ror-focused film club The Final Girls offer a fas­ci­nat­ing premise for their screen­ing choic­es, giv­en the genre’s bad rap when it comes to por­tray­al of women. At The Cube Cin­e­ma, they present a dou­ble-bill of Sid­ney J Furie’s The Enti­ty and short film Out­er Space, focus­ing on issues of female vic­tim­hood and sex­u­al assault. Get tick­ets

Amer­i­can film essay­ist Bill Mor­ri­son is known for re-cut­ting old archival footage into new nar­ra­tives, which often become reflec­tions on film and film his­to­ry. In Daw­son City: Frozen Time, his longest fea­ture so far, he exam­ines the re-dis­cov­ery of a trea­sure trove of lost nitrate film reels, buried in the Yukon tun­dra for 50 years. Using the his­to­ry of Daw­son City as a back­bone for his sto­ry – and includ­ing clips from the lost footage itself – Mor­ri­son builds a hyp­not­ic inter­ro­ga­tion of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry life and the pio­neer days of motion pic­tures. Get tick­ets

There’s no bet­ter place for the UK pre­mière of this bio­graph­i­cal doc on a Hol­ly­wood icon than his home­town in Bris­tol. Fresh from the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, Mark Kidel’s film takes a keen inter­est in Grant’s infa­mous exper­i­ments with LSD – but also in his remark­able rise to fame from his hum­ble start as a cir­cus enter­tain­er named Archibald Leach. Get tick­ets

Jean-Luc Godard’s deeply con­tro­ver­sial time cap­sule of rad­i­cal late ​’60s left­ism is being restored for the big screen – and a Blu-ray release. Catch it ear­ly to see the film’s remark­able use of pri­ma­ry colour, bold imagery, and frankly head-spin­ning sup­port of the Maoist régime. Strange, beau­ti­ful, and polit­i­cal­ly trou­bling, this tur­bu­lent account of domes­tic ter­ror­ism is sure to look gor­geous on the big screen. Get tick­ets

Cin­e­ma Redis­cov­ered runs 27 – 30 July. For more info vis­it water​shed​.co​.uk

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