From Geena Davis and Jamie Lee Curtis, to blaxploitation royalty Pam Grier; Joe Dante and Roland Emmerich, to genre legend Peter Hyams topping the bill – 2024’s Forbidden Worlds Film Festival promises the biggest (and maddest) year yet for genre fans in the South West.
Firing into its third year of taking over arguably Bristol’s best cinema screen – the abandoned IMAX at Bristol Aquarium (lovingly dubbed ‘the BetaMAX’ by locals, and now better than ever with upgraded sound and projector), Forbidden Worlds has never been one to cater to the masses. It’s a true one-screen wonder of a festival, promising the most unusual and sought-after of cinematic treats; big, mad, weird shit projected large and loud, for three straight days.
For example, while 2024’s edition promises an explosive opening night with a 30th anniversary screening of none other than Keanu Reeves action classic The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down (otherwise known as Speed), look as far as the following day’s line-up and you’ll be met with quite the opposite, in little-seen Soviet-era black comedy Kin-dza-dza! and Shun’ya Itô’s bizarre ’70s cult favourite Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. When the most ‘mainstream’ thing being shown all day is Roland Emmerich’s Stargate, you know you’re among friends.
The festival’s programme splits itself neatly into different strands which gently overlap and balance each other out. ‘Killer Queens’ frontlines the original cult action stars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s; the sort of hard-edged characters that led the way for contemporary giants like Furiosa. Pam Grier classic Foxy Brown is the most obvious stand-out, but a very special 4K restoration of Luc Besson’s Nikita, and a literal building-sized screening of Attack of the 50ft Woman is an exciting prospect too. As is a rare big-screen outing for Geena Davis’s fan-favourite amnesiac assassin in friend of the festival Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight.
“Powerful female characters were few and far between in films made in the twentieth century,” says lead programmer Tessa Williams, “and that is best put into words by one of our Killer Queens herself, Geena Davis. ‘Identifying with a character is one of the best parts of seeing a movie, but as women, we’ve had to train ourselves to experience the male journey.’ I’m really excited for our audience to experience the high-octane journeys of these six iconic characters kicking ass on Bristol’s giant screen.”
Elsewhere, the ’Inner Worlds & Outer Spaces’ thread champions sci-fi classics like Innerspace and The Last Starfighter; ‘From the Video Shop Archives’ brings plenty of curios from the dungeons of local video shop 20th Century Flicks (including a 2K-restoration of bonkers Indonesian fantasy The Devil’s Sword); and the for the first time ever, ‘Genre Filmmakers of the Future’ gives a spot for up and coming shorts.
“Since we launched the festival, we’ve had hosts of requests from filmmakers, both local and further afield, asking to submit their short genre films so they could be shown on our big screen,” adds festival director Timon Singh. “We had loads of great submissions and it was hard whittling them down to just twelve titles, but those filmmakers will now get the opportunity to win prizes from our genre-loving judges and audience.”
With two showcases across Saturday and Sunday, platforming an eclectic mix of genre shorts from all over the world, and a judging panel that includes Polite Society writer-director Nida Manzoor, and Host producer Jed Shepherd, it’s an incredibly exciting way to celebrate an area of the short film community that’s in desperate need of more love.
Rounding off with a celebration of genre veteran Peter Hyams – visionary writer, director and cinematographer behind the likes of Capricorn One (Friday), Outland (Saturday night) and Jean-Claude Van Damme arse-kicker Timecop (Sunday evening) – it’s set to be another banner year for fantasy, action, sci-fi and horror on the big screen in the South West.
Forbidden Worlds Film Festival kicks off in Bristol 16-19 May 2024. Details on tickets and the full line-up of films can be found at forbiddenworldsfilmfestival.co.uk.
