Bristol Film Festival’s summer season includes a Focus on Bristol

Bristol Film Festival brings it all back home with a day of screenings of films with local connections this summer. Some of these connections are fairly tenuous, but it’s an excellent line-up taking place on Thursday 2 July in The Mall Gardens, Clifton Village.

The programme opens with the 1950 swashbuckler Treasure Island, parts of which were shot in Bristol’s Floating Harbour. Next up is the classic Ealing Comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), in which a bunch of plucky villagers attempt to keep their local railway running. The fictional ‘Mallingford Station’ is actually Temple Meads, and there are plenty of other local locations to spot.

Then there’s the classic noir The Third Man (1949). No, Orson Welles didn’t come to Bristol, but the film’s scene-stealing star Trevor Howard was educated just down the road from the screening location at Clifton College.

Next is a real treat in the form of the rarely screened 1962 teen flick Some People. This is Bristol’s very own sixties juvenile delinquent film, which also serves as a propaganda piece for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. A trio of tearaways (including the very young David Hemmings) race along the Portway on their motorbikes, whereupon they get nicked, putting a stop to their ton-up fun. After getting caught breaking into All Saints Church on Pembroke Road to play rock’n’roll on the organ, they’re taken under the wing of nice cardigan-wearing Kenneth More, who lives in a grand house in Clifton and encourages them to form a band. We see them romping about on Christmas Steps, working at the docks, milling around the grotty old bus station, hanging out in Old Market and, um, clothes shopping in the old Marks and Spencers in Broadmead. They also groove in the Glen dancehall (later Tiffany’s and now the Spire private hospital on the Downs), chill in the groovy basement El Toro coffee bar (this was on Queens Road, opposite Dingles) and whizz around in a roller skating rink (actually South Bristol Baths, which was boarded over). Ken does something terribly important and hush-hush at Filton Airfield, while girl singer Terry (Angela Douglas, who wound up in plenty of Carry On movies) works at the Bristol Cigarette Factory. Watch out for Harry H. Corbett doing the worst-ever Bristolian accent.

Next is Hot Fuzz, which was filmed in director Edgar Wright’s home town of Wells, and the Richard Curtis romcom Notting Hill. Nope, no locally shot scenes in that either, but director Roger Michell was also educated at Clifton College.

Go here for more information about the Bristol Film Festival’s summer season and to book tickets.

Main pic from ‘Some People’ supplied by Network Releasing.