What's On

'Chronically Online: A Personal History of the UK Internet' is coming to Cultplex in Manchester on September 24th! The Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend's (CNFW) one-night-only touring programme of digital delights on the big screen showcases the stories Britain tells about itself through the internet. Touring Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, and Lewes, this programme of vlogs, memes, and...

SOLD OUT! Counterfilms is proud to present Jean Luc Godard’s atmospheric sci fi-noir masterpiece, Alphaville. A film which created and broke genres and showcased his inventiveness, flamboyance and is at the same time poetic and in some strange way, a romance. Set in a dystopian AI governed future, it takes the conventions of macho thriller and spy films and subverts them to create humour and sus...

FFS Screening! Friday 5pm for £5! Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Claude Barras’s My Life as a Courgette tears up the rulebook for children’s cinema. Adapted from Gilles Paris’ book by Céline Sciamma ( Girlhood, Tomboy ), this melancholy yet witty claymation traces the effects of childhood tragedy. Nine-year-old Icare, known to his friends as ‘Courgette’, finds himself...

Redline is a turbo-charged, hand-drawn adrenaline rush from anime powerhouse Madhouse—ten years in the making and an all-gas-no-brakes spectacle that pushes 2D animation to its physical and artistic limits. Every frame pulses with raw energy, packed with high-speed collisions, mutant mayhem, and the wildest character designs this side of the galaxy. The story follows reckless racer JP as he enter...

We couldn't host an animation weekender without all four cracking half-hour specials featuring Aardman's Oscar-Winning duo - the charming and eccentric inventor Wallace and his faithful, four-legged friend Gromit- on the big screen! Join Cultplex for a crackin' day out to celebrate Aardman Animations 50th anniversary! A GRAND DAY OUT On a quest for his favourite snack, Wallace takes Gromit on an ...

Animated plastic toys like Cowboy, Indian and Horse have problems, too! Cowboy and Indian’s plan to surprise Horse with a homemade birthday gift backfires when they destroy his house instead. Surreal adventures take over as the trio travel to the centre of the earth, trek across frozen tundra and discover a parallel underwater universe where pointy-headed (and dishonest!) creatures live. Each sp...

Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer adapts Lewis Carroll's classic, combining a live-action Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) with creepy stop motion animated characters. While around forty film versions exist, as well as numerous TV adaptations, the version that Czech stop motion master Jan Švankmajer fashioned in 1988 stands alone in its dark and original take on Carroll’s light-hearted tale. In Alice, Ko...

If you're not too Byrne'd out from discovering who is the sky, come and join us on the dancefloor! A24’s 4K rerelease of Stop Making Sense showcases a crisp restoration of the iconic Talking Heads concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme. FAIRFIELD SOCIAL CLUB provides the dancefloor. Get dressed up so nice as you’re encouraged to get on the floor and make flippy floppy to all of Talking Heads’ a...

It’s “Bambi meets Apocalypse Now” in this provocative and strangely beautiful horror comedy from acclaimed filmmaker and illustrator Alberto Vázquez (Birdboy: The Forgotten Children). For ages, teddy bears have been locked in an ancestral war against their sworn enemy, the unicorns, with the promise that victory will complete the prophecy and usher in a new era. Aggressive, confident teddy bear B...

Three years in the making, and worth every moment, Lotte Reiniger’s beautiful 1926 silhouette animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, brings to life magical tales from the Arabian Nights. The earliest surviving animated feature film – preserved in the BFI National Archive – it has been hailed as one of the world’s most innovative and influential animations and celebrates it's 100th Anniversary...

When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters - an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire - to rescue him, in this beloved 2003 animation from director Sylvain Chomet. Adopted by his grandmother, Madame Souza, Champion is a lonely little boy. Noticing that the lad is never happier than on a bi...

Ralph Bakshi encountered Tolkien’s writing early in his career, and had made several attempts to produce THE LORD OF THE RINGS as an animated film before being given funding by producer Saul Zaentz and distributor United Artists. The film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action, then traced onto animation cels. It uses a hybrid ...

It's taken us a while to get our grubby mitts on this bizarre and nightmarish masterpiece from the king of cinematic surrealism Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, The Holy Mountain). Now we are incredibly excited to announce that SANTA SANGRE will be shown on the big screen in glorious 4K restoration by Severin Films ! Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy with relative ease to create a narr...

Screening as part of STAB! It's time once again to celebrate a dead guy rising from the grave! Our annual screening of everyone's favourite seventies Lancashire/ Cumbrian based zombie movie with the incredible 1974 Euro-horror cult classic The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (also known under the titles Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Don't Open the Window, and Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dea...

Scientists in an isolated research facility become the prey as a trio of intelligent sharks—genetically altered in the name of medical research—fight back. On an island research facility, Dr. Susan McAlester is harvesting the brain tissue of DNA-altered sharks as a possible cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When the facility’s backers send an executive to investigate the experiments, a routine proced...

On Halloween, Jackie, a trans woman in Keyport NJ, chases her escaped crow. After tragedy strikes, she’s possessed by Baphomet and seeks revenge. Lucy and Max get caught in the chaos while heading to a party. GASP! will kick off the Halloween special Horror All-Dayer with a perfect slice of Halloween fun. Carrying the same irresistibly enjoyable indie spirit that often came with 90s SOV horror fi...

Synopsis – DJ, a mentally-plagued electronica musician, stumbles upon the “Master Frequency”—a dangerous sound wave that distorts the body and mind. As DJ falls deeper into the frequency’s grasp, they must save their mind and loved ones. Bringing some sci-fi into the mix for the Horror All-Dayer, GASP! is very proud to present Bosmo Kosmerly’s mind-bending Dark Frequencies. This is a great exampl...

GASP! presents five Short Film Showcases at their main festival each year, and this Horror All-Dayer showcase works as a great example of what you can expect from those showcases as well as GASP! Horror Film Festival as a whole. From an intimate relationship with a TV to a surprise party gone very wrong and from a Mexican slasher to a ballet creature feature, this showcase is sure to provide somet...

When Countess Marya Zaleska appears in London, mysterious events occur that lead Dr. Von Helsing to believe that the Countess must be a vampire. Each year, GASP! includes an anniversary screening of a horror classic on their lineup, and for the Horror All-Dayer, they’ve gone way back to the year 1936 to bring you a 90th anniversary screening of the first-ever lesbian vampire film, Dracula’s Daugh...

A relaxing weekend at their remote lake house appears to be the perfect remedy for stressed newlyweds Max and Baker. When Baker suggests that they use the getaway to finally pursue an illicit encounter he's been pressuring, Max reluctantly agrees, hoping it will add a much needed spark to their relationship. What results is an unimaginable blood soaked nightmare and will require unthinkable measur...