2024 Programme

Thursday 24 October 2024

Sugar, Spice & Getting in Fights: stunt workshop for women/NB people

Fancy being the next Michelle Yeoh? Limber up for our interactive stunt workshops led by an experienced stunt performer, KA-POW!

Pier to Peer: A Seaside Sisterhood – Documentary Screening and Q&A

Join us for the premiere of this short documentary, followed by a Q&A discussion with the cast and filmmakers.

A group of passionate young women band together to make change in their local community and hometown of Blackpool. With personal archives collected over one summer, to workshops and many conversations, Pier to Peer is a short film about youth, activism and the friendships created along the way – and all rooted in a complicated love letter to the places we call home.

BFI NETWORK Filmmakers Mixer

Join us at our in person Talent Mixer at Blackpool Film Festival this year.

We’re excited to host Blackpool’s first BFI Network in-person talent mixer. This informal, conversational meet-up will be a great opportunity for creatives to connect with the growing community of local Film and TV industry folk, share stories and meet future collaborators.

Craft-a-long The Craft

Dig out that sketchbook and dust off those crochet hooks as we invite you to join us on this Halloween weekend for a craft-a-long screening of cult teen horror classic The Craft.

After transferring to a new high school, new girl Sarah befriends a group of three wannabe witches, a group of misfits who happen to be seeking a fourth member to complete their coven.

Barbie Stop-Motion Workshop

Do you love dolls? Would you like to see them come alive in their very own movie?

Then join @vintagebarbieclare for a fun and easy beginners stop-motion animation workshop!

Come and learn how to animate dolls and miniatures and leave with your very own mini movie masterpiece.

The Witches (1990): Family Screening and Craft Session

Join us for a morning of mischief and magic with a family-friendly screening of The Witches (1990), followed by a creepy craft session!

Female Trouble

Strap on those cha cha heels for an evening of depraved decadence introduced by special guest, drag queen Titty Kaka.

BFF x Queer Amusements present a 50th anniversary screening of John Waters’ 1974 sleazy smash hit Female Trouble.

A Hard Night’s Day – Heritage Talk

Want to know what happened behind the big screens?

Join Collections Manager Caroline Hall as she screens footage from her father’s time working in cinema for the very first time.

This beautiful and nostalgic short film will be followed by a Q&A.

FREE ENTRY.
No need to book.

BFI Art of Action: Polite Society (2023) Screening & Panel

As part of the BFI Art of Action season, Blackpool Film Festival is excited to present a fun-filled night of thrills and spills.

Celebrate the women of action cinema with a screening of action-packed satirical comedy, Polite Society.

Follow martial artist-in-training, Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) in this joyous mashup of familial affection and roundhouse kicks as she battles to save her sister from her looming marriage.

Get ready for an exhilarating journey filled with daring heists, crafty disguises and epic fight sequences, as we see Ria put her stunt training to the test.

Blackpool Cinemas Heritage Talk

Lights, camera, action!

Discover the history of Blackpool’s cinemas during the golden era of the big screen. Did you know that Blackpool was once home to twenty operating cinemas?

This engaging talk takes a look back at some of Blackpool’s iconic cinema venues.

Scarred for Life

Was your childhood traumatised by Worzel Gummidge, Doctor Who and Day of the Triffids?

The children who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s were placed in the unenviable position of being scared by virtually everything. In this show, Liverpool writers Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence – the men behind the superb Scarred For Life books – will be giving a hilarious talk about the TV, films, music, comics, board games, books, adverts and crisps (no, really) that blighted all of our childhoods. All accompanied by a slide show of some of their most potent childhood fears!

Kris Canavan – In The Shadow Of…

You are cordially invited to In The Shadow Of… an exhibition by performance artist Kris Canavan. Commissioned by Abingdon Studios; supported by Aunty Social and Blackpool Film Festival.

This exhibition explores the body as both site and subject through film archive, photography, and mixed media, drawing on Canavan’s visceral performance work and its self-expressive, experimental and profound social and political implications.

STIM CINEMA: The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood

Stimming is the practice of physical repetition as a way of taking sensory pleasure in recurrence, or of expressing and alleviating anxiety, and is a common trait of autistic experience.