Patrick von Sychowski: I have the pleasure of speaking to two champions of Independent Cinema from Bristol's iconic Watershed Cinema. Mark Cosgrove, the founder and co-curator of Cinema Rediscovered and passionate advocate for film culture for three decades. And alongside him is Maddy Probst, festival producer of Cinema Rediscovered and head of film at Watershed. Welcome to you both.
Mark Cosgrove: Thanks!
Patrick: I want to begin by asking about what's been happening in terms of recovery for the Arthouse Cinema sector after Covid. What's changed in terms of Watershed's attendance and programming?
Mark: I'll kick off with that. We went through, as everybody did, the slow comeback of the audience and there was a period of existential doubt: is cinema done because of the rise of streaming, because everything went online, because people spent so much time not going to the cinema? The cinemas were closed, but people were watching more and more films. You just thought, is that it? Has the model completely changed?
But over the intervening years - it was a slow start, it was painful, and the residual pain is still there - audiences have come back in full force, especially this financial year that we're just ending. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was an amazing moment where cinema, the theatrical experience, really reasserted itself. Everybody across the industry had a sigh of relief because of all the previous experiences of Bond and everything moving. Here was something to really celebrate.
An indication of how things have changed is that pre-Covid, Barbie wouldn't have been a film that Watershed would have screened or gotten behind because the commercial market would have taken care of it. But this time it was something we felt we really wanted to engage with, but do it in a distinctive way. We focused on the eventizing side of things.
Maddy Probst: Yes, with Barbie in particular, we focused on getting that queer audience and atmosphere going and transforming the physical space of the cafe bar. This was one of the first times, like Mark is saying, that we were able to do that with joy and without being nervous about bringing people together. That really worked and resonated with local press because they were looking for places doing that, and we were probably one of the only venues. The film was screening everywhere, but we were one of the only venues that had gone all the way and organized a party. The whole building was pink!
Mark: One of our colleagues is a drag artist outside of work, so he performed as Quiches Lorraine in the cafe bar, which was just amazing, and everybody dressed up.
Maddy: That eventizing has continued as a trend - really trying to find films where we can create something special and different. We did something for "Love Lies Bleeding," which is a smaller independent title than Barbie. We worked with a Butch bar to create a whole event with games and fun. The whole building was packed with a great atmosphere. Quite frequently, that means Watershed gets really strong results on smaller titles because we're going that extra mile and creating a special experience.
Mark: It's about doing that eventizing around the more crossover commercial titles. We recently did "A Complete Unknown," which was a Dylan retrospective with talks and live performance of Dylan songs in the cafe bar.
But with the more Arthouse titles, there's been an interesting shift pre and post-Covid. With smaller films, which are getting squeezed in the market with smaller profile and spending, we've found that audiences take a while to come to them. That's led to a programming shift - booking these films longer and thinner.
The most extravagant example was "Perfect Days" from Wenders, which had a huge audience in the first run. We kept it running for a year, just showing it every weekend. After a couple of months when some of the heat had gone out of it but there was still demand, we kept it running at minimum one slot every weekend, getting really good results. That became a story, so when it came to the year anniversary, we did a whole Perfect Day weekend for the closing, and we sold out. It was the highest grossing film that weekend over four screenings, selling out our main cinema.
You realize that away from the more mainstream commercial releases, the more Arthouse films need more careful attention. Another example is the Brazilian film "I'm Still Here," which has been getting really good feedback and audiences. That audience doesn't come out in the same way - they need time to come to the film, so you need to keep it present in the program for longer. Keeping that longer, thinner approach happening is a real shift from pre-Covid.
Maddy: Another shift, building on what Mark said about "longer and thinner," is the rise of film clubs and partnership working with long-standing film clubs. For instance, we've got a partnership with the University of the West of England on an initiative called "Thought in Action," which is an ongoing series led by their philosophy department. They buy out some tickets and present introductions and host discussions around the films. Interestingly, they're picking some of those smaller titles that are struggling to punch through, like "On Falling." These films are getting good exposure through those clubs.
We've also got a “Latinas in Bristol Film Club” led by Lorena Pino that started looking specifically at Latin American releases. It's quite informal - with an intro in the cinema, and a hosted discussion element in the bar afterward. It's helping build that local word of mouth that’s often missing from national campaigns.
Patrick: That's interesting about the eventization, programming longer and thinner, and the rise of film clubs. But has anything changed in terms of how you reach audiences and communicate what's available?
Maddy: For Watershed specifically, one of the big shifts was us leaving X [Twitter], mostly for ethical reasons, but it's also made us think harder about how we might communicate alternatively. We launched a Letterboxd platform, building on the experience with Cinema Rediscovered. That's been great because it's allowing us to place our content in a community that is very young - a Cinefile community, but perhaps one that hasn't engaged with the theatrical offer so much.
The rise of Letterboxd was very much during Covid - they've had exponential growth. So you can assume some of those users aren't actually going to the cinema much, but they love film and are interested in film. We're experimenting, but some exciting features are things like the stories where we can tag specific films and use more editorial features that aren't tangled up with our What's On website. They're in a place where people are looking for that type of content.
In the future, they're definitely a platform that could be extremely exciting in terms of a corporate offer for cinemas. With them adding showtimes, the platform becomes a really interesting tool. If they could unlock more features - for example, understanding what people living in Bristol and surrounding areas have on their watchlist - those are things we could be playing with. Even just being able to look up a film and seeing where it stands in that community is really interesting.
Patrick: Before we get onto repertory cinema and Cinema Rediscovered - Letterboxd seems to have taken a central role especially for young audiences - are there any specific challenges or difficulties for cinemas like Watershed, or is it just things like the price of energy and staffing?
Mark: That's been a major structural issue post-Covid - the whole running costs have gone through the roof. Managing that is the biggest challenge. The other challenge is that we all have to work harder at reaching the audience. You can't take anything for granted.
You've got to make sure the basics are covered. We've got a strong brand, a strong local brand, and we've just got to be confident in that, but you've always got to work hard. Internally, we've refocused energy around the Cinema-Communications relationship, meeting more regularly, being more strategic about campaigns and how we're reaching audiences. We've just taken a whole load of posters out around the city for the David Lynch season we're doing, "Behind the Curtains." It's about people and the energy that's going in.
Maddy: In terms of digital platforms, we're also looking at TikTok and investing in more videography because that's working, but it takes quite a lot of investment on our part.
Mark: I think it's something that a stand-alone indie cinema like Watershed - one of its strengths is that we've got those people, that expertise and those skills in-house, and we can really deploy them to engage the audience.
Maddy: In a very local way. That's the big difference.
Patrick: Before we move on to younger audiences, one thing you haven't brought up yet is streaming. Where does streaming now sit in all this?
Mark: People used to say pre-Covid that digital was the disruptor. When Covid happened, it was like, no, Covid's the disruptor. Digital was just the beginning - Covid really ramped everything up. There was that existential moment when all the cinemas were closed.
But what I realized, and I think this was felt by a number of people I talked to post-Covid, is that our USP is the building and the cinematic, theatrical experience. It's great that streaming is there, it's great that people can watch films across the spectrum, but what we offer is a really different experience. It's watching films, but in a very different way. Covid kind of ramped up that difference and uniqueness.
That gave me the confidence to say, this is what it's about - it's about the social experience of the building, seeing a film with an audience, and what happens before and after. What we need to do is really keep pressing that home as our USP.
Patrick: That's a wonderful segue into the discussion about younger audiences and repertory cinema. We've read a lot about younger audiences discovering older films. What are you actually observing in terms of Gen Z and younger millennials engaging with repertory programming?
Mark: I'll kick off and then Maddy's got the hard evidence. The root into Cinema Rediscovered came when I noticed 10-15 years ago that whenever we screened classic repertory films like "Once Upon a Time in the West" or "Seven Samurai," I saw young audiences coming to see those films, which was really interesting.
Along with that, we'd been going to Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, and seeing that scale of film being presented - archives, restorations, etc. - and seeing a younger audience engaged with it. That gave me the confidence to come back and "put the whole show on here." We got the blessing from Bologna to call us Cinema Rediscovered, building on those two experiences - the in-house experience and the Bologna experience.
Meanwhile, the world of restorations and 4K restorations has really grown in the theatrical market. Every year we have an MA curation placement from the University of the West of England. A couple of years back, it was Steph Read who's now doing our programming.
One time I put on Edward Yang's film "Yi Yi" from 2000, which hadn't been screened for years. We managed to get access to a print through Cinema Rediscovered, screening it in September. In my experienced programming head, I thought we'd probably get about 30-40 people, so I put it in a small screen. We moved to the big screen and got 180 admissions! It wasn't even a re-release - there was nothing special about it.
I came in Monday morning asking what happened, and Steph showed me Letterboxd. In a Letterboxd listing, there was "25 films to see before 30" or something, and there was "The Godfather," "Mean Streets," and "Yi Yi" as part of it.
Another story with Steph was when Curzon reissued "Wings of Desire." My old programming head thought, "Who cares about Wings of Desire? It was released three or four years ago." This little voice pipes up and says, "I'd like to see it in the cinema." So we put it on for three days over a weekend, and it was the highest grossing film that weekend.
At that point, I realized things had changed. There's definitely an audience, Gen Z and millennials, that wants to experience these films in the cinema. Letterboxd has definitely been a driver of that engagement. And Steph being 23-24 at the time could see her antenna onto that kind of audience. There's clearly a shift here.
Through restructuring, I managed to get Steph doing the programming, and I stepped back to do longer term stuff. It felt like, in the words of Bob Dylan, "the times they are a-changing."
Maddy: Since Steph's taken on the day-to-day programming, they put in a lot of repertory as part of the mix year-round, perhaps even more than we were previously doing. Things like doing a full Béla Tarr retrospective which just finished - I wouldn't have thought Béla Tarr would necessarily connect with a young audience, but 33% of the audience was 24 and under, which is pretty impressive.
Mark: And think about that - Béla Tarr in August!
Patrick: Blockbuster season!
Mark: Exactly.
Maddy: Steph got really excited about it and worked with our front of house team to get Béla Tarr badges made. I don't know if you're aware of the Brat Summer campaign with Charli XCX, but they got Béla Tarr badges made in that style and created video mashups to draw in a younger crowd. So it's a mix of having the confidence to show the work, but then also being playful with the marketing.
We then did a whole thing on Technicolor, and again, films I would have thought would play well to older audiences like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" - actually 51% of the audience was 24 and under!
We're getting more confident with the rep programming. We've just finished a two-month Chantal Akerman retrospective, which was of scale for a venue outside of London, working closely with the BFI Southbank. We're becoming bolder with rep year-round. We're doing the films of David Lynch throughout this month, and we're not just putting one screening of each film - we're doing repeat screenings and a big campaign, which I can't remember us doing before. We're doing an outdoor campaign and commissioning specific artwork. The whole organization is getting behind it. We're also being playful in the cafe bar space with cocktails, and our front of house team is planning crafts-based sessions and a Lynch inspired soiree..
Patrick: So it's back to eventising the whole experience.
Mark: That's the point to reinforce - it's the whole organization getting into it. We've got people working on our box office and cafe bar who are huge fans of cinema, hugely knowledgeable. We're much more joined up, and that's what I mean about the organization working harder. I don't mean cracking the whip - I mean pulling our natural resources, which is the people. Box office staff aren't just selling tickets - they're talking to customers, communicating, and involved because they feel ownership.
Maddy: There's some playfulness too. Another shift that's happened since pre-Covid is we've started doing seasonal launches, inspired by the theater model. We're looking at longer leads and flagging things to our audience much more in advance before they're on sale.
One of the issues with smaller titles or indie offers and seasons is that customers find out about them too late. Since we've shifted to digital communications, which is great and flexible, sometimes we announce things too late. Bringing in these seasonal launches gives us much more visibility for programs in advance. We invite customers to join a "coming soon" list so they're the first to be informed, and that's working really well.
Patrick: In terms of curation, how do you balance contextualising older films for a new audience without becoming too academic?
Mark: An older person can be too reverential and too po-faced about high art. To have a fresh take on it is really important. I just had a conversation with Jojo, a young guy who works in the cafe bar who's really interested in film. He’s now working with us on Watershed’s Film Club for your people, going into schools and talking to people about Watershed. He's only in his twenties, but he's going into schools and chatting with kids. He said it's challenging because for school kids it's all about being "too cool for school." I just thought, can you imagine me doing that? That's where you get into the realities of who's communicating to whom about what, taking it out of the revered academic side. There is a place for academia absolutely, but in terms of initial communication, using Letterboxd and other platforms is a much more conducive tool. There’s also Film Club hosts, who'll be hosting a post-screening discussion for 16-18-year-olds.
Maddy: Also really thinking about the types of speakers we involve or the co-creators we work with, making sure we have a whole range of people with different lived experiences. Sometimes their focus might not be on film - it might be much more about the topic of the film or some lived experience that means they can connect with completely different new audiences. We're really interested in that and how we can work with different partners to draw new audiences.
Patrick: That's an excellent introduction to talk about Cinema Rediscovered. It's come a long way since 2016 and you kept it going through Covid. What's the biggest difference today compared to when you first envisioned it?
Mark: The major difference for this one is that we got two-year funding from the BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding National Lottery funding, which allowed us to plan ahead. So we had a longer lead time, and secondly, me stepping back from the week-by-week programming gave me more headspace for longer-term planning. Those two things meant we've had longer planning periods. If we can keep that up, knowing we've got money in place well in advance and more headspace for longer-term planning, we'll continue to see benefits.
Maddy: Having that longer-term investment has been great. Looking back at our first edition versus now, the second edition was when we launched the touring program, and we had about four venues taking a tour. In our 2nd edition in 2017, we launched a touring programme which went to 3 venues and we reached circa 3000 admissions. Last year in our 8th edition, we had 15,000 admissions across the 60 venues in this festival across the UK and Ireland. The impact has grown with clear buy-in from our partner distributors, venues and festivals.
What Mark set out to do right at the beginning - I remember him saying "let's do it at the end of July because it's a quiet period for independent theatrical exhibition" - was to create a theatrical spot for repertory films. At the time, a lot of those films were going straight to physical media or streaming. A lot of restorations weren't being distributed theatrically.
That's one of the shifts I've observed now. We can't claim everything, but certainly our partner distributors like Curzon, Park Circus, StudioCanal have realized the potential around that theatrical window. Many of those partners are launching films at the festival - "Paris, Texas" launched at the festival last year, "Virgin Suicides" the year before.
Mark: With "Lone Star," it was going to go out there without much happening, but we got some partners involved and ended up having a theatrical release. This year we're doing the same with “My Beautiful Laundrette”, we're getting director Stephen Frears to come to the festival for the 40th anniversary, and then it will be re-released alongside another package with Park Circus titled ‘Against The Grain: 1980s British Cinema’. The festival has established itself as a platform recognized by the industry as a launchpad.
Maddy: It's been a really good meeting point as well. We've always had a very small industry strand, but last year we sold out and are looking at moving it to a bigger space. We had 100 distribution, sales companies, exhibitors and archive practitioners from across the UK and Ireland. We're starting to get international delegates as well which is encouraging.
We're introducing new closed screenings for exhibitors on the Thursday and Friday - early morning screenings of restorations coming out in the autumn. It's slowly turning into a tiny little market for UK exhibition.
Patrick: Could you dig deeper into the curation process? What makes a film or program a right fit for the festival?
Mark: Having the headspace to think about film is important. Another part I didn't mention about Bologna was a lightbulb moment for me seeing Peter von Bagh, the much-loved program director in Bologna. He introduced a screening of a restoration of "My Darling Clementine," the John Ford film, to a packed cinema of 500 seats with many young people. He simply said, "This is the greatest American film ever made."
When the house lights were coming down, I thought, "It's not even John Ford's greatest film!" But by the end, I thought maybe he had a point. The lightbulb moment was that film culture was being represented and coming alive again. There's a debate to be had about what the greatest American film looks like. So putting on these old films can regenerate debate about film culture.
Another example was seeing the restoration of "Easy Rider" in Bologna, which got me thinking about the new Hollywood of the 70s and how "Easy Rider" was one of the first films that allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum. There was a transition in Hollywood - you have "Easy Rider" at one end and "Jaws" and "Star Wars" at the other. In between, Hollywood opened its doors to all these amazing independent directors. Since it was 50 years since that period, it got me thinking about looking at that aspect of American cinema.
That was how some ideas began to formulate about revisiting films. Then talking to film companies about specific restorations that would fit within that context or season. It allows a curator to present films thematically, like how the art world puts together exhibitions around themes.
Maddy: From the beginning of Cinema Rediscovered, it was always a collaborative endeavour. At that time, Mark was working full-time on the Watershed film program, so there wasn't capacity for us to do it alone. But we were always excited about bringing together the enthusiasm of various collectives and individuals we were aware of, like Film Noir UK, South West Silents, the 20th Century Flicks video shop and Come The Revolution. There was energy in Bristol that we wanted to tap into and champion.
The festival became a mechanism to open up the theatrical spaces here for partners to come together and pitch their films. We started with partnerships and collaborations, and as we've evolved, we're conscious that we don't want to work with the same people repeatedly. We want the festival to be seen as something you can take part in and pitch into.
We launched "Other Ways of Seeing" last year formally - we had already been working that way, but we made it more open and formal to say you can take part and pitch something. It's been fantastic with some really great strands coming out of it.
Patrick: Maddy, as a festival producer, what have been some of the most personally rewarding aspects as it has developed?
Maddy: For me, it's the co-creation element and seeing the individuals pitching things evolve, grow, and develop their practices, but also seeing fantastic events result and films being brought to our attention that we wouldn't have known about.
One example from last year would be Lorena Pino, who's based in Trowbridge outside of Bristol and has been doing pop-up screenings at the Trowbridge Town Hall. She's been involved in various programs we run to get into curation but comes with huge personal experience - she used to work in the film industry in Venezuela. She got involved in the festival as a volunteer coordinator first, then as a photographer, and is now the coordinator of the festival.
Last year, she had been talking about the lack of Latin American film in our program, and we challenged her to do something about it. She brought us the film “El Cine Soy Yo,” (above) which she had contact with the filmmaker back in Venezuela. She was aware of a restoration that not many people knew about - it hadn't been to Locarno or big festivals. She brought the film to our festival, then we included it in the touring program, and it went to over 10 venues. I'm still getting bookings for it.
We want to develop this further. We had an open call this year, and you'll see further down the line that the Cinema Rediscovered program has lots of elements programmed by outside curators, some we know and some we don't. They've come through open calls and are bringing different types of films to our attention. They'll be fronting those events and meeting the audience, which will be a different experience for audience members.
Mark: That's one of the defining characteristics of the festival - getting those new voices coming through the program rather than the curator giving you the message. There's a whole bunch of curators with many different messages, connecting with many different audiences, allowing different voices to communicate their cinematic enthusiasms and passions.
Maddy: It's interesting in terms of the impact on the wider industry. Companies like Park Circus are being exposed to different curators, writers, and content creators, and they're responding to that. I remember Christina Newland coming to perhaps the first edition of our festival, and now she's regularly writing program notes for Park Circus and curating seasons.
We launched a joint initiative last year called "Pitch to Park Circus," which was really successful. We asked curators to come up with ideas for seasons from their catalog, and the prize is that the winning package gets added to their catalog, promoted, and offered to cinemas. This year at Cinema Rediscovered, you'll see the winning package from last year making a return to Watershed, and that initiative will continue this year.
Patrick: It's wonderful to hear that festivals like Cinema Rediscovered can play an important role in film preservation and throwing a spotlight on overlooked or forgotten works in cinema history.
Mark: That is a key part. It's called Cinema Rediscovered, but what we're doing is actually discovering films. "Bushman" was one of the films I'm really proud of - an American film made by David Schickele in the 70s that I'd never come across. Historically, it's a really interesting film and connects with what was happening in San Francisco in the early 70s. It was restored, we showed it at the festival, it got a really good response, and then it was picked up by Other Parties and others. This was a film that wasn't rediscovered but actually discovered.
Maddy: That's been another interesting thing with the festival. One of the strands is to present new restorations, but we've also made a commitment to presenting films that aren't yet restored but perhaps should be. A few years ago, we welcomed Leslie Harris for a screening of "Just Another Girl on the I.R.T." We literally had to fly her over with her only print of the film.
Mark: She won Sundance at the same time as Tarantino and Soderbergh and all that crowd were coming through. But she had the only print of that film.
Maddy: We did that several years ago, and it's just so great to see Park Circus and T A P E Collective re-releasing the restored version of the film this year. Festivals can play a really important role in these restorations. I'm sure there were lots of factors in that film being restored, but for Leslie, it meant a lot for us to present the film at the festival, and it certainly raised awareness of the film here in the UK.
Patrick: Given everything you've told me about repertory cinema, young audiences, and Cinema Rediscovered, I take it you must be hopeful for the future of Arthouse Cinemas?
Mark: I am. I go through the roller coaster each year - is the glass half full or half empty? I said this early on with Cinema Rediscovered, partly in a headline-grabbing way, but I still mean it: "Film's past is its future."
I do feel there is a strong audience in the independent world for the history of film. I think it's growing stronger, and it relates to new releases as well because it's ultimately all about film culture. The current experience of audiences in this financial year has been great, so I'm very optimistic about it.
Maddy: Zooming out from the UK, I did a presentation at Europa Cinemas’ Vilnius Conference about rep programming, and it was interesting to see this echoed across the board. There are venues like Kino Rotterdam and activity happening all over Europe around repertory. It's not just a UK phenomenon.
In the States, it's something that's been core to indie cinemas for a very long time. And here in the UK, if anything, places like Watershed or the Prince Charles that have been doing this for a long time almost need to figure out how to respond now that so many venues and festivals are doing rep. We need to recalibrate and maybe go a little more into the discovery space.
It's ultimately all about cinema-going - seeing the past of cinema in the cinema where it's new. Going back to Mark's "My Darling Clementine" story, it has that immediacy. The rep stuff is linked with the new release stuff because it's all about film culture. On Letterboxd, it's not "here are the new films and here are the old films" - it's just "here are films."
Patrick: A colleague said to me that an old film is just a new film you haven't seen yet.
Mark: Exactly.
Maddy: With films like "Jeanne Dielman" (above) coming back into the theatrical space - that was a moment because you realize you're not going to watch that on a streaming platform, or if you do, you're likely to turn it off and make yourself a cup of tea. The intensity of that film wouldn't be felt - seeing it in the cinema is a completely different experience.
Unlike Mark, I'm a "glass full" person, but I did get anxious during Covid that we'd never get back to where we were before. But now it doesn't just feel more possible - what I've noticed with the team at Watershed is we're starting to take risks again. We're being bolder with our curation and more ambitious. That's exciting because all of that will translate to the audience. Our energy and ambition is connecting with audiences.
Patrick: Final question - what advice would you give to other Arthouse or Independent cinemas that haven't gone as far yet as the Watershed has?
Maddy: We have direct experience through the touring program and have these discussions about what they might do. I really think that considering the local brand and how the film will play at the local level is key. If you have a Latin American community or you're trying to connect with the queer community, perhaps start with that. Putting energy in localised elements and building on existing brands that resonate at the local level is key.
If they're doing a regular club, maybe try one of the rep titles we're proposing. We offer a range, so there'll be films that are more recognizable - don't just do the smallest film on its own. Do a mix so you can bring the audience in with a slightly more popular title. Regular slots are a good way to start building a regular audience for rep and then start trying different things.
Mark: The great strength of indie sites is that they are on the ground, close to their community. Be confident about that. You have the opportunity to really engage with the audience and find out more about them. Use that strength of being on the ground, along with your passions and enthusiasm.
Maddy: Have fun with it!
Mark: Because it's a job about a hugely passionate area. What Covid did was focus on the business aspects, but our business is entertaining and engaging the audience. Getting back to that with confidence is important.
Maddy: With older films, you can have longer lead times. You're not waiting for last-minute changes in the schedule with new releases - they've already come out. You can plan more in advance and do different things such as special events, bespoke merchandise, bespoke artwork and print for example.
Mark: The indie world is small enough that we all talk to each other, so sharing experiences and expertise across different venues is something we could build more on. One of the key things about the tour has been the collaborative element. On our own, we couldn't afford a lot of these titles, but because we've managed to get a core group of venues to sign up to the tour at the beginning, we can approach sales agents and negotiate much more attractive terms.
We've also managed to come up with technical solutions, like with Park Circus putting several films onto one drive. That was such a breakthrough in terms of costs, and it happened as a result of Cinema Rediscovered.
Maddy: Now they regularly do these season packages, which is fantastic - it reduces costs and helps exhibitors. Always work collaboratively with other organizations to bring costs down and be smart about joint marketing. Creating shared assets makes a big difference.
Patrick: This has been such a great conversation. I haven't even got around to asking about things like the appeal of 35mm film.
Mark: Just quickly on 35mm - it's extraordinary. We got a 35mm print of "Nosferatu" [the new Eggers film] and also a DCP. The 35mm would regularly do better business and get a younger audience!
Maddy: One final thing - we're opening the festival this year with a 35mm preservation print from the British Film Institute National Archive of "Absolute Beginners." That's such a selling point - 35mm! The film was made in '86, and hopefully, we'll soon see a 4K restoration making its way to cinemas.
Patrick: There you go! It's been super positive hearing everything you've got to share. All power to you for everything that you do with the Watershed and Cinema Rediscovered. Thank you very much, Maddy and Mark.
Mark: Thanks!
Maddy: Thanks for the chat!
[End of interview]
Interview with Mark Cosgrove and Maddy Probst of Watershed Cinema