Film / News
Improv makes its cine-club debut at Cinema Rediscovered
Cinema Rediscovered returns to Watershed for its tenth anniversary edition this year.
As one of its original curators, I’ve been invited back to build new cultural connections celebrating classic, archive and repertory cinema – with a performative twist.
Partnering for the first time with the Pretend Company, this year’s festival features improvised comedy interventions and two very special Improv Cinema Clubs.
On opening night, you can expect to see the main character from Danger: Diabolik come to life.
The film is a cult classic based on a popular 1960s Italian comic that is still sold on newsstands and in supermarkets all over Italy – I picked one up for €3.99 on my recent travels.
The title character, Diabolik, is a super-suave super-villain, who will be giving out relationship advice via a special hotline.
If you have a question for the unlikely agony-aunt, simply find the phone booth in Watershed’s cafe/bar before the film.
And if the advice doesn’t work out, you can come find Diabolik after the film in the cafe/bar for even more improv antics, where he will be joined by Bristol two-prov G&T and graphic artist Graham Johnson.
Expect to learn a little and laugh a lot.
This theme of learning and laughing will continue throughout the festival, with the Pretend Company’s brand new Improv Cinema Clubs.
Mixing the traditional film club discussion group vibe with embodied exercises and games that build on the film programme’s themes and ideas, Improv Cinema Club is a brand new way to connect with others and to think deeply about films.
Improv is clearly having a moment – as observed in the Observer, and at our own Bristol Beacon where Dropout TV’s travelling troupe entertained the city’s many comedy, theatre and D&D fans in June.
Dropout is an online TV platform whose subscriber numbers are growing fast and who have just submitted for 11 categories in the Emmys.
Appetites for live comedy and interactive events are clearly booming – and with young audience interest in classic cinema on the rise, bringing the two together was a no-brainer for the festival.
The Improv Cinema Clubs each focus on a specific film and film strand in the wider Cinema Rediscovered programme.
The first is inspired by Vive le Cinema! and Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003).
An elegant example of slow, almost silent cinema, Goodbye, Dragon Inn and Vive le Cinema look at the emotional drive behind nostalgia, and how relationships to place and location create memory and meaning.
The second workshop is more irreverent zeitgeist, focusing on Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2000) and the Comics Come Alive films, which explore genre, style and super/antihero archetypes in popular culture.
As Cinema Rediscovered celebrates a decade of bringing big films back to the big screen, improv is making its agony aunt hotline, cafe/bar antics and cult club debut.
Cinema Rediscovered takes place from July 22-26; with events taking place at cinemas including Watershed, 20th Century Flicks, Curzon, Cube and Bristol Megascreen. For more information, visit www.watershed.co.uk/cinema-rediscovered-2026
Main photo: Paramount Pictures
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
