Here you can find what showings and events we’ve got coming up on Bristol’s biggest screen.
Cary Comes Home Festival 2024
Fri 29 Nov – Sun 1 Dec 2024
Celebrate one of Bristol’s biggest icons on Bristol’s biggest screen with 8 classic films across 3 days.
Cary Grant Festival celebrates their 10th anniversary this year! This year the festival explores Cary’s acrobatic prowess and his lasting impact on action cinema.
South West Silents: Creatures of the Night
Sat 18 Jan 2025 2pm
South West Silents and Maria Pérez Cuervo from Hellebore join forces again to showcase two more horror classics, this time, celebrating the ‘Creatures of the Night!’
Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) – Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne.
The Lost Boys (1987)
Slapstick Festival: Harold Lloyd in The Freshman (1925) – with Paul McGann
Wed 12 Feb 2025 6pm
Join actor and Lloyd admirer Paul McGann for a screening of one of Harold Lloyd’s best-loved comedies. In this satire of college life, Lloyd plays a student desperate to gain popularity, including on the football field, despite having no flair for the game.
Some of his classmates, however, are faking friendship and aim to make him look like a fool. Will the affection of his landlady’s daughter be enough to turn his fortunes around?
Accompanied by Carl Davis’ critically acclaimed orchestral score track, this is a heart-warming and hilarious event you won’t want to miss.
Slapstick Festival: Hundreds of Beavers – with Ryland Brickson Cole Tews
Wed 12 Feb 2025 8:30pm
Made on a lowly $100,000 budget, this surprise independent hit about a trapper (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) battling malevolent beavers is already heading towards cult classic status, having picked up scores of awards from festivals worldwide, earning glowing reviews from top critics & audiences and getting a 97% score on the Rotten Tomatoes’ tomatometer. It is also such a masterful homage to slapstick hits of the silent era that its makers are being awarded the Slapstick Legacy Medal.
With introduction and post show conversation hosted by Robin Ince awith co-writer/ lead actor Ryland Brickson Cole Tews Plus Q&A
“Genuinely bananas and genuinely funny” – Mark Kermode.
Slapstick Festival: Alasdair Beckett-King’s Laurel & Hardy Mayhem
Thu 13 Feb 2025 6pm
Slapstick is thrilled to welcome award-winning comedian Alasdair Beckett-King to host our annual celebration of the greatest comedy duo of all time: Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. Join Alasdair as he dives into the timeless brilliance of Laurel & Hardy in conversation with stand-up comedian and writer Robin Ince.
Alasdair will bring his unique blend of clever, absurdist humor and a whimsical style to Stan & Ollie’s comedic magic on the big screen, showcasing their finest comedy shorts and iconic moments. Plus, a post show Q&A with the audience.
Slapstick Festival: The Great Dictator (1940) with Alasdair Beckett-King & Robin Ince
Thu 13 Feb 2025 8pm
Alasdair and Robin introduce this special big screen outing of Chaplin’s masterful and timely satire. They will explore how Chaplin masterfully used comedy to take aim at authoritarianism, racism, and war. Released before the USA entered WWII, The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first talking picture, and he didn’t hold back. His brilliant lampooning of Adolf Hitler made the film both a courageous act of defiance and a masterclass in using humour as a political weapon.
Despite being banned in Nazi-occupied territories and doubts about its success elsewhere the film became Chaplin’s highest grossing film. The film’s closing speech—a moving appeal for peace and humanity—remains strikingly relevant in today’s turbulent world. One of cinema’s most daring and significant works on the big screen.
Frequent collaborators
Find out more info about the festivals and film groups that you can often find at Bristol Megascreen.
Previous events
Under the Sea Technicolor Double Bill
1–5pm, November 10th, 2024
A Technicolor underwater masterpiece featuring BBC TV’s nature film icons, Dr. Hans and Lotte Hass, UNDER THE CARRIBEAN / UNTERNEHMEN XARIFA (1954) offers the opportunity to explore the underwater realm with Hass and his team in an especially immersive fashion in this new subtitled digitisation from a vintage Technicolor print by Filmarchiv Austria, screened with kind support from Dr Michael Jung.
Furthermore, thanks to the Royal Film Archive of Belgium – CINEMATEK, we explore THE GREAT BARRIER REEF in Pierre Levie’s 1969 film that has been likened to Cousteau’s best works, features footage by shark experts Ron and Valerie Taylor (JAWS) and remarkably reflects some of the ecological issues sadly threatening the ocean realm in the present.
Wildphotos
Sun 13 Oct
Wildscreen and Wildlife Photographer of the Year partner to host WildPhotos – a celebration of the world’s best nature photography.
WildPhotos is a one-day photography symposium, packed with talks from the world’s top wildlife and conservation photographers.
Wildscreen
13 – 18 Oct
Wildscreen Festival is the world’s leading wildlife and environmental film festival. Immerse yourself in our Official Selection of unique and original productions about the natural world, created by storytellers from across the globe.
Forbidden Worlds Film Festival: The Big Scream
11th – 12th Oct
Forbidden Worlds looks at the perils of stranger danger with six selections from around the globe: the cult British folk horror of The Shout; a brand-new 4K restoration of VHS favourite The Hitcher, starring the much-missed Rutger Hauer; Dario Argento’s audacious Opera, also presented in a brand-new 4K restoration; the creepy and influential Cure from Japan; teen horror fave I Know What You Did Last Summer; and the quintessential ‘stranger danger’ horror, When a Stranger Calls.
South West Silents: Witchcraft Double Bill
Sat 28 Sep, 2pm
South West Silents are teaming up with Hellebore magazine to bring you this double bill of classic tales of witchcraft and folklore. Häxan (1922) followed by The City of the Dead (1960).
Deep Blue Sea – 25th Anniversary
Sat 21 Sep, 7.30pm
A team of scientists at a remote underwater facility conduct genetic research on Mako sharks in hopes of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. However, their experiments take a terrifying turn when the sharks become smarter, faster, and far more deadly.
Cinema Rediscovered: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul
Sat 27 Jul, 9pm
Brazil’s first horror film. Zé do Caixão is the malevolent undertaker of a small Brazilian town, plaguing its superstitious townsfolk with existentialist lectures and violent mayhem! To prove his superiority to humankind, Zé searches for the perfect woman to bear him a perfect child. Nothing and no-one will get in the way of his quest to propagate this cursed bloodline and seal Zé’s only chance at immortality!
Cinema Rediscovered: The Conversation
Sat 27 Jul. 6:15pm
From legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman stars as Harry Caul, a reticent surveillance expert, gets into trouble when he suspects the couple he secretly recorded is going to be murdered by his client. With intro by Adrian Utley.
Cinema Rediscovered: Paris, Texas
Sat 27 Jul, 2pm
One of the most iconic films of the 1980s, Harry Dean Stanton stars as a man wandering out of the desert and in to the ghosts of the past.
Tucker & Dale Vs The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974
Sun 21 Jul, 3pm
Horror Without End and 20th Century Flicks, the team that brought you ThreadGames, invite you to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the greatest horror film ever made… followed by one of the funniest.
Queer Vision: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Sat 6 July 2024
Showing as part of Bristol Pride’s Queer Vision film festival, this classic comedy celebrated it’s 30th anniversary at Bristol Megascreen with a performance from the Bristol Show Choir and Bristol’s very own drag icon, Tess Drive.
