The revival of Bristol’s secret super-sized screen

For 12 years, Bristol’s biggest cinema screen has remained largely empty, hidden away on on the Harbourside.

But last year the space was reopened for the Forbidden Worlds Film Festival, drawing audiences back to its dusty seats.

Following the festival’s success, the cinema is slowly becoming a lively film and event space again, ushering in a potential new life for the former IMAX. This year sees other new screenings added, including film premieres and a folk horror double bill event.

The cinema was opened in 2000, becoming Britain’s third IMAX cinema (boasting a 15×18 metre screen), and was originally part of At-Bristol’s Wildwalk ecology zoo experience, while also playing cinematic releases.

But after low public popularity, increasingly expensive running costs and a lesser interest in 3D films outside of the US, it was sadly mothballed in 2007.  It then only showed wildlife films for the Aquarium, until in 2011 the cinema closed altogether and was mostly used as a conference space.

This year’s second instalment of the Forbidden Worlds Festival – which offers a leap into the archives of horror, fantasy and sci-fi genre films – welcomes audiences back to the former IMAX. The new digital projector is whirring back to life, manned by Dave Taylor, the festival producer and owner of Bristol’s longest running video shop 20th Century Flicks.

The projection booth: still in full working order – photo: Sunny Hubbard

Although the cinema hasn’t had a refurb since its millennium run, its bright neon green seats and grubby carpets are part of its “charm” for the festival team, the cinema almost becoming a ‘time-warp’ taking audiences back to the blockbuster movie palaces of the millennium.

The 2023 festival will be organised into three strands. The first is built around the 90th anniversary of King Kong, and celebrates the work of legendary special effects artist Ray Harryhausen (who created the renowned Kong model) and other stop motion pioneers.

Like last year, there will be a leap into the 20th century flicks archives, with a rare theatrical screening of Pumpkinhead, which originally went straight to video, and the UK premiere of a new 4K restoration of classic sci-fi horror Invaders from Mars amongst the line-up.

The festival this year will also host guests, welcoming Ray Harryhausen’s daughter Vanessa with Connor Heaney, collections manager for The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, who will introduce King Kong, and acclaimed film writer Ian Nathan to introduce The Terminator.

2022 screening of Taiwanese fantasy ‘Thrilling Bloody Sword’ – photo: Forbidden Worlds Film Festival

Following the 2023 awards season the festival’s Michelle Yeoh segment feels particularly relevant. It will introduce audiences to the now Oscar-winner’s earlier work and perhaps draw in younger cinema-goers after the box-office busting success of meta-verse hit Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Indeed, festival director Timon Singh hopes that the Michelle Yeoh films, following her more mainstream Oscar success, will draw in “people of [a younger] generation, who might have only seen Yeoh in Crazy Rich Asians, or Last Christmas [but] never got to see her earlier stuff, especially not on the big screen.”

The Forbidden Worlds festival will run from May 18-21, and Singh is excited to welcome audiences back to the former IMAX, hoping that with the festival “Bristol becomes a destination city for genre films.”

Together these screenings will see Bristol’s hidden cinema once again bustling with excited audiences.

Main photo: Sunny Hubbard

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