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, Kohoutová plays the role close to Carroll’s original, mischievous Alice from the novel. Yet, in the context of 1988 socialist Czechoslovakia, rebellious Alice is not just a historical image of resistance against communist conformism but also represents a craving for freedom from socialist stricture.
Welcome back to CULT SCHOOL at CULTPLEX, where the syllabus is the world of cult film! New Hollywood, also known as the Hollywood Renaissance, or American New Wave, was a film movement spanning the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Central to this movement were a new generation of filmmakers who made films reflecting the tensions of their time. This talk will explore some of these tensions in films f...
Join Slump Cinema for a screening of The Heroic Trio at CULTPLEX, with an introduction by Shu-ling Li, a British born Chinese illustrator. The Heroic Trio is a silly, goofy, beautiful, action packed explosion starring the three holy mothers of Asian cinema: Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui. They star as superheroes who fight against an evil master who is abducting newborn babies. The o...
Spit in the Lock is a Manchester based film club that screens films that depict the exquisite ache of unrequited yearning. Catch us across the city showing movies that explore the melancholic, romantic longing of forbidden love. Set in the height of the 1970s glam rock era, Velvet Goldmine follows the rise and fall of the rock star Brian Slade, as seen through the eyes of former fan and journalis...
This charming, campy musical may be about a brothel, but as Dolly assures us in her opening number, “there ain’t nothin’ dirty goin’ on!” Parton stars as Miss Mona, the no-nonsense madam of the famous Chicken Ranch brothel, while Reynolds plays the local sheriff—and Parton’s lover—who turns a blind eye to the Ranch’s activities. Their arrangement is threatened when a moralistic TV reporter launch...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
Ali Plumb – that movie bloke off the internet with the interviews and the specs and the beard – is taking his delightfully nerdy film quiz on the road again… and you should definitely come. Taking place at FAIRFIELD SOCIAL CLUB with an ACTUAL CINEMA SCREEN (fancy!), he'll be taking his suitcase full of prizes and brain full of silly film-related questions to your local picture house. What should ...
You can't say we don't treat you! See the iconic Space Jam for just £1 to celebrate the 30th anniversary! Swackhammer, an evil alien theme park owner, needs a new attraction at Moron Mountain. When his gang, the Nerdlucks, heads to Earth to kidnap Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes, Bugs challenges them to a basketball game to determine their fate. The aliens agree, but they steal the powers of NBA ...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
BUTTON MASHER RETURNS TO MANCHESTER Lower the lights, and turn every night into Halloween with MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY. After months away, crawling the internet for more weird and wonderful cinema gimmicks, the wild cats at Button Masher have stumbled across the often overlooked gem MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY, a staple of the now defunct touring spook show circuit. A group of teena...
UrbanArtistry Presents... Basquiat (Black + White Version)
Sat 19 Sep
Basquiat (Black + White Version) + Short Film [ CADAQUÉS ] by SHEONE - 2026 Midnight projections in the home town of Dali 6mins No painter electrified the 1980s art scene like Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street kid whose visionary blending of expressionism, pop art, and the radical new aesthetics of hip-hop and graffiti propelled him to international fame before a tragic early demise. Juli...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
From the dazzling imagination that brought you It Follows comes a feverish neo-noir starring Andrew Garfield! An epic, code-cracking, acid-spiked amateur sleuth story that tips its hat to Hitchcock, Lynch, Carpenter, and everything in between. Directed by David Robert Mitchell, this film is a mesmerizing blend of noir, mystery, and dark comedy that invites you into a labyrinthine journey through ...
Chronically Online: A Personal History of the UK Internet + Q&A
Thu 24 Sep
'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...
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 suspense, whil...
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...
Animation Weekender: Wallace and Gromit Shorts Collection
Sat 26 Sep
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! A GRAND DAY OUT On a quest for his favourite snack, Wallace takes Gromit on an out-of-this-world adventure in his home-made spac...
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...
Obscure Film Presesnts: Dance Along Stop Making Sense
Sat 26 Sep
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...
Welcome back to CULT SCHOOL at CULTPLEX, where the syllabus is the world of cult film! New Hollywood, also known as the Hollywood Renaissance, or American New Wave, was a film movement spanning the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Central to this movement were a new generation of filmmakers who made films reflecting the tensions of their time. This talk will explore some of these tensions in films f...
Join Slump Cinema for a screening of The Heroic Trio at CULTPLEX, with an introduction by Shu-ling Li, a British born Chinese illustrator. The Heroic Trio is a silly, goofy, beautiful, action packed explosion starring the three holy mothers of Asian cinema: Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui. They star as superheroes who fight against an evil master who is abducting newborn babies. The o...
Spit in the Lock is a Manchester based film club that screens films that depict the exquisite ache of unrequited yearning. Catch us across the city showing movies that explore the melancholic, romantic longing of forbidden love. Set in the height of the 1970s glam rock era, Velvet Goldmine follows the rise and fall of the rock star Brian Slade, as seen through the eyes of former fan and journalis...
This charming, campy musical may be about a brothel, but as Dolly assures us in her opening number, “there ain’t nothin’ dirty goin’ on!” Parton stars as Miss Mona, the no-nonsense madam of the famous Chicken Ranch brothel, while Reynolds plays the local sheriff—and Parton’s lover—who turns a blind eye to the Ranch’s activities. Their arrangement is threatened when a moralistic TV reporter launch...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
Ali Plumb – that movie bloke off the internet with the interviews and the specs and the beard – is taking his delightfully nerdy film quiz on the road again… and you should definitely come. Taking place at FAIRFIELD SOCIAL CLUB with an ACTUAL CINEMA SCREEN (fancy!), he'll be taking his suitcase full of prizes and brain full of silly film-related questions to your local picture house. What should ...
You can't say we don't treat you! See the iconic Space Jam for just £1 to celebrate the 30th anniversary! Swackhammer, an evil alien theme park owner, needs a new attraction at Moron Mountain. When his gang, the Nerdlucks, heads to Earth to kidnap Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes, Bugs challenges them to a basketball game to determine their fate. The aliens agree, but they steal the powers of NBA ...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
BUTTON MASHER RETURNS TO MANCHESTER Lower the lights, and turn every night into Halloween with MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY. After months away, crawling the internet for more weird and wonderful cinema gimmicks, the wild cats at Button Masher have stumbled across the often overlooked gem MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY, a staple of the now defunct touring spook show circuit. A group of teena...
UrbanArtistry Presents... Basquiat (Black + White Version)
Sat 19 Sep
Basquiat (Black + White Version) + Short Film [ CADAQUÉS ] by SHEONE - 2026 Midnight projections in the home town of Dali 6mins No painter electrified the 1980s art scene like Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street kid whose visionary blending of expressionism, pop art, and the radical new aesthetics of hip-hop and graffiti propelled him to international fame before a tragic early demise. Juli...
Part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal. With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding. The films in this season, far from the liberal consensus often associated with Hollywood of the period, are darkly difficult in terms of subject matter and pr...
From the dazzling imagination that brought you It Follows comes a feverish neo-noir starring Andrew Garfield! An epic, code-cracking, acid-spiked amateur sleuth story that tips its hat to Hitchcock, Lynch, Carpenter, and everything in between. Directed by David Robert Mitchell, this film is a mesmerizing blend of noir, mystery, and dark comedy that invites you into a labyrinthine journey through ...
Chronically Online: A Personal History of the UK Internet + Q&A
Thu 24 Sep
'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...
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 suspense, whil...
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...
Animation Weekender: Wallace and Gromit Shorts Collection
Sat 26 Sep
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! A GRAND DAY OUT On a quest for his favourite snack, Wallace takes Gromit on an out-of-this-world adventure in his home-made spac...
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...
Obscure Film Presesnts: Dance Along Stop Making Sense
Sat 26 Sep
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...
