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Be Kind Rewind Bristol Cinema Club, The Ill Repute, Bristol (2026)

23/06/2026

On Thursday 16th July 2026, Be Kind Rewind Bristol returns to the downstairs cinema at The Ill Repute with one of the strangest, most personal, and most fascinating films ever committed to celluloid: Glen or Glenda (1953).

Written, directed by, and starring the legendary Ed Wood, this deeply sincere cult oddity was made at a time when almost nobody in Hollywood was willing to touch its subject matter. Part semi-autobiography, part exploitation film, part surreal fever dream, Glen or Glenda attempts to explain cross-dressing and gender identity to a 1950s audience through a haze of dream sequences, stock footage, morality lectures, and inexplicable appearances by Bela Lugosi. The result is unlike anything else.

For all its technical shortcomings and wonderfully strange detours, there's something genuinely moving about Glen or Glenda. Beneath the chaos lies a heartfelt plea for understanding from a filmmaker exposing something deeply personal at a time when doing so carried real risk.

It's funny. It's surreal. It's historically significant. And it's impossible to forget.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served (arrive early to guarantee a seat)
🍻 Drinks and snacks available at the bar

11/06/2026

💋 A QUICK WARNING FOR THE FILTHY... 💋

If you're planning on joining us for Pink Flamingos on Thursday 18th June, we'd strongly recommend getting down early to reserve a seat (just a piece of clothing draped over a seat will do!)

This is our three-year anniversary screening, we're showing arguably the most famous midnight movie ever made, and we're following it with a John Waters party upstairs. In short: it's probably going to be a busy one.

Our downstairs cinema is intimate by design and once the seats are gone, they're gone. As always, admission is first come, first served and we can't squeeze people in beyond capacity.

The evening begins with A Love Letter to Edie at 8pm, celebrating the life and legacy of the wonderful Edith Massey, before Pink Flamingos hits the screen in all its filthy glory.

Whether you're a longtime John Waters devotee or about to experience Divine's quest to become "the filthiest person alive" for the very first time, this is one you won't want to miss.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market
🚪 Doors 7:30pm
🎞 A Love Letter to Edie (8pm start)
🎬 Pink Flamingos (8:30pm)
🎉 John Waters Party upstairs from 9:30pm
🎟 Free entry

Arrive early. Grab a drink. Claim a seat.

Because if there's one thing worse than watching Pink Flamingos...
..it's hearing everyone else talk about it afterwards 💄

08/06/2026

“I came here to get rich… not to get holy.” 💰

On Thursday 2nd July 2026, we head back downstairs at The Ill Repute for a sweaty, Southern Gothic descent into chaos with Mudhoney (1965)

From cult provocateur Russ Meyer, this is small-town America stripped bare: lust, greed, religion, and violence all tangled together in the mud of Depression-era Missouri. It’s a world where morality is fragile, desire is loud, and everything feels like it’s about to tip over.

Starring Hal Hopper, John Furlong, and Antoinette Bower, Mudhoney is Meyer before the full bombast; still rough-edged, still morally slippery, but already fascinated with obsession, decay, and the way people unravel when pushed just slightly too far.

Shot in stark black-and-white and soaked in atmosphere, it plays like a fever dream of the American South: part melodrama, part exploitation, all heat and rot and bad decisions waiting to happen.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served (arrive early to guarantee a seat)
🍸 Drinks and snacks available at the bar

A dusty, delirious cult oddity from the edge of American cinema where salvation feels just as dangerous as sin ✝

02/06/2026

On Thursday 18th June, we're celebrating three years of Be Kind Rewind Bristol the only way that makes any sense: with Pink Flamingos and a John Waters party afterwards!

Before the main feature, we'll be screening A Love Letter to Edie, a short tribute to the unforgettable Edith Massey; egg enthusiast, Dreamlander, and one of the most beloved outsiders in underground cinema history.

Then comes Pink Flamingos.

Part midnight movie, part endurance test, part work of genuine cinematic rebellion, John Waters' legendary cult classic remains as funny, shocking and defiantly tasteless today as it was in 1972. At the centre of it all is Divine, cinema's undisputed queen of filth, battling to retain her title as "the filthiest person alive."

Love it, hate it, laugh at it, recoil from it but you'll almost certainly never forget it.

And when the credits roll, the celebration continues upstairs from 9:30pm with our John Waters-themed party. Expect camp classics, trash glamour, sleaze, bad taste and a room full of people paying tribute to one of cinema's greatest champions of outsiders, weirdos and troublemakers.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room + bar
🕗 Doors 7:30pm - films start at 8:00pm
🎉 John Waters Party from 9:30pm
🎟 Free entry (first come, first served for films downstairs)

01/06/2026

SCREENING THIS THURSDAY

For nearly fifty years, Suspiria has sat in a category of its own. Not because it's the scariest film ever made, but because it feels unlike anything else. The colours are impossibly vivid. The music pounds like a panic attack. Logic dissolves. Every corridor feels cursed.

A young dancer arrives at a prestigious academy. Strange things begin to happen. Beyond that, it’s best experienced rather than explained.

Part fairy tale, part nightmare, part art installation drenched in blood-red light, Suspiria is the kind of film that reminds you horror can be beautiful, overwhelming and genuinely strange.

If you've never seen it on the big screen before, you're in for a treat. If you have, you already know why people keep coming back to it.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served
🍷 Drinks and snacks available at the bar

23/05/2026

DIRGE FILM FESTIVAL 2026 IS OVER.

To everybody who came down to spend last weekend with us at The Ill Repute, thank you. Seriously.

What started as an idea between the team at Be Kind Rewind Bristol turned into two days of disturbing, challenging, beautiful, disgusting and unforgettable cinema shared with a room full of people who genuinely care about underground film culture.

From transcendental odysseys to absolute depravity, from The Holy Mountain and Salo to Cannibal Holocaust and Begotten, every screening was packed and every corner of the bar was buzzing with conversation. The atmosphere across the entire weekend was something really special.

This was our first ever festival and the support honestly meant the world to us. Thank you to every single attendee, guest, volunteer, and member of staff who helped make DIRGE happen.

We’ll be back in 2027 👀

DIRGE FOREVER.

21/05/2026

TONIGHT, we’re screening The Telephone Book in the downstairs cinema at The Ill Repute; a wild, satirical deep-dive into desire, anonymity, and urban absurdity.

Directed by Nelson Lyon, this gloriously unhinged cult comedy follows a woman who receives an obscene phone call and becomes determined to track down the mystery voice behind it. Sensible? Not remotely. Entertaining? Absolutely.

What follows is a headlong sprint through seedy corners of New York, where every doorway seems to open onto another bizarre encounter. Equal parts s*x farce, underground comedy, and social prank, The Telephone Book turns bad manners into an art form.

But beyond the outrageous hook, it’s also a snapshot of a vanished city. It's scrappy, grubby, unpredictable, and buzzing with possibility. The kind of film that feels discovered rather than manufactured.

Loud, tasteless, inventive and strangely charming, this is cult cinema doing exactly what it should: taking risks and making trouble.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served
🍸 Drinks and snacks available at the bar

19/05/2026

“Filth are my politics, filth is my life.”

Thursday 18th June 2026 marks THREE YEARS OF Be Kind Rewind Bristol! And honestly, there was only ever going to be one film for the occasion: Pink Flamingos.

Directed by the Pope of Trash himself, John Waters, and starring the one and only Divine alongside John Waters' other Dreamlanders, Pink Flamingos remains one of the most gloriously confrontational cult films ever made. Sick, hilarious, sleazy, shocking and weirdly beautiful, it’s a film that still feels shocking over fifty years later.

To start the night, we’ll also be screening A Love Letter to Edie (1975), a celebration of underground icon Edith Massey, whose warmth and chaos helped make the Dreamlanders immortal.

Three years ago we started showing strange films in the pub basement because we loved them and hoped a few other people might too. Somehow it turned into this great little community of cult film obsessives, regulars, first-timers, and beautifully curious people. So this one’s a celebration of all of you as much as the film itself.

And when the film ends at 9:30pm, we’re carrying on upstairs with a full John Waters-themed party to celebrate three years of Be Kind Rewind Bristol. Expect trashy tunes, cheap glamour, bad taste in the best possible sense, and a room full of people who probably should’ve been banned from polite society years ago.

Three years of cult films in a pub basement. Three years of filth, community, and beautiful oddballs showing up every fortnight. We genuinely couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate it.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room + upstairs bar
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Films start at 8pm
🎉 John Waters party upstairs from 9:30pm onwards
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served

14/05/2026

SCREENING IN ONE WEEK - THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971)

Directed by Nelson Lyon, this notorious cult curio follows Alice, who receives an obscene phone call and decides, quite reasonably, to dedicate herself to finding the man on the other end of the line. What unfolds is a feverish odyssey through peep shows, side streets, strange apartments and the kind of urban chaos cinema rarely captures anymore.

Shot on the streets of early-70s Manhattan, The Telephone Book is less interested in good taste than pure momentum. It’s vulgar, witty, anarchic, unexpectedly stylish and packed with comic detours, surreal characters and enough bold design to wallpaper an art gallery.

Beneath the outrageous premise is a time capsule of a city and an era when independent filmmaking could be reckless, cheap, inventive and completely unbothered by respectability.

📍 The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
🕗 Doors 7:30pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
🎟 Free entry - first come, first served
🍺 Drinks and snacks available at the bar upstairs (bring 'em down with you)

This is the sort of film best discovered in a dark room with other curious people.

More info: https://hdfst.uk/e153328

12/05/2026

THIS WEEKEND

We are super excited to welcome you all to the very first DIRGE Film Festival at The Ill Repute ☠

A full weekend of secret screenings; cult cinema, drinks, filth, and absolute depravity.

Thank you to everyone who has bought tickets and supported this weird little nightmare of a festival. We genuinely can’t wait to share it with you.

Haven't got a ticket yet? Tickets are now very close to selling out, so grab the remaining tickets while you still can. Message us for more info, listings and ticket links.

See you in the dark.

Be Kind Rewind Bristol Cinema Club

23/06/2026

11/06/2026

08/06/2026

02/06/2026

01/06/2026

23/05/2026

21/05/2026

19/05/2026

14/05/2026

12/05/2026

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