Cinema Rediscovered, the UK’s leading festival of classic cinema comes to Portsmouth with a selection of restorations and rediscoveries, including highlights from the American DIY films of the ’80s
The punk and ‘no wave’ movements of the late 70s cut a noisy if brief swathe through the pretensions of the increasingly corporatised contemporary music scene. Emerging from the physical and cultural decay of downtown NYC, the punk scene combined an aggressive rejection of canonical and popular taste with an enthusiastic D.I.Y. approach – producing works that defied categorisation, defiled the audience and despised convention. This fuelled a renewed energy in both East and West coast underground scenes, spurring a rush of low-budget filmmaking, loaded with irony-rich critique.
As part of Down & Dirty: American D.I.Y Restored, we are showcasing some newly-restored 80’s punk era gems and lo-fi provocations – among them, Beth B’s anarchic comic satire on religion, greed and consumerism Salvation (1987) screening WED 27 SEPT 19.00 alongside Juliet Bashore’s queer docufiction Kamikaze Hearts (1986), TUE 10 OCT 19.00.
In October, Black History Month, we present Claudine, (1974) on THU 5 OCT 19:00 featuring an Oscar®-nominated performance by Diahann Carroll as a working class mother struggling to make ends meet, offering an antidote to the testosterone driven star-turns of the blaxploitation cycle. The film has a memorable, socially conscious score by Curtis Mayfield with songs such as ‘On and On’ and ‘The Makings of You’ performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Claudine was also produced by Hannah Weinstein for the Third World Cinema Corporation, a company started by Weinstein and Ossie Davis, amongst others, to promote film roles for black actors and train black film practitioners.
Finally we showcase Kavery Dutta Kaul’s newly restored documentary One Hand Don’t Clap, (1988) on TUE 17 OCT 19:00 which celebrates Calypso music in all its beauty featuring legends such as Calypso Rose and Lord Kitchener. The film gives us an insider’s look at the music’s presence and origins on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago, where it emerged in the early 19th century.
Presented as part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour, a Watershed project. With support from BFI awarding funds from The National Lottery and MUBI.
