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The UK’s leading classic film festival is heading to Bristol in July, with tickets on sale next week.

Acclaimed repertory film festival Cinema Rediscovered is returning to venues across Bristol for its 9th year this summer, with more than 60 events taking place across the city from 23rd – 27th July.

Opening with a keynote address from producer Stephen Woolley ahead of a 35mm screening of his 1986 David Bowie musical, Absolute Beginners, the programme promises film-on-film rarities, workshops and special guests.

The opening night paves the way for the festival’s ‘Against The Grain’ strand, celebrating classics from the British independent film scene of the 1980s. Director Sir Stephen Frears and star Gordon Warnecke will make an appearance for a 40th anniversary screening of My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Gabriel Byrne is due to talk (via video) about political thriller Defence Of The Realm (1985), and Lucy Sheen will chat British-Chinese comedy Ping Pong...

Comcast’s Sky Arts channel that goes free-to-air from Thursday has announced four new original program commissions including from “Trainspotting” writer Irvine Welsh and “Bulletproof” star Ashley Walters.

In “Offended by Irvine Welsh,” the author explores the nature of offence and its impact and sets out to reclaim the right to offend, but not abuse, as an essential tool for artists. “Sky Arts Book Club Live” will see hosts, the chef and presenter Andi Oliver and “How to Fail” author Elizabeth Day, invite four members of an existing club to chat about new releases, favorite classics and hear from different guest authors each episode.

Ashley Walters makes his directorial debut in a short film, “Boys,” written by newcomer Jerome Holder. Set in East London, two best friends fulfil a promise made to one’s older brother, embarking on a journey that will shape them and the men they will become.

Britain's cottonmill workers used to dance it. Then it became a mark of shame. Now clog dancing has returned to where it belongs – the streets

The streets of Newcastle have begun to echo with a sound that has not been heard since the industrial revolution. A sharp, rhythmic knocking can be heard among the Saturday crowds in Eldon Square, one of the city's busiest intersections. It sounds a little like the clatter of hooves, though there are no horses in sight.

What the shoppers do not realise is that they are about to be ambushed by the biggest clog dance event staged in the UK. More than a hundred volunteers have, literally, got their clogs on and been coached to perform a mass routine. For 10 minutes, the dancers bring the city to a standstill. There are people clogging on oil drums, between the tables outside Pret a Manger and up the steps of Grey's monument.

Today, arts groups in Somerset will find out if the council's proposed 100% cut to their grants will go ahead. Could the rest of the country follow?

It's a Monday morning in the Somerset town of Taunton. White-haired women are chatting over teacakes in the Flying Aubergine West Country cafe. The river Tone is flowing prettily past a car park. And inside the Brewhouse theatre, actor Caroline Horton is on stage, wearing a silver-and-white dress that's twice as long as her body. On her head is what looks like an icicle. "Shall I do my white witch face?" she says.

Horton is starring in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, this year's Christmas production at this thriving theatre and arts centre, described last year by the Guardian's Lyn Gardner as "a crucial part of both the local and national theatre ecology". This is the first day of rehearsals, and the...

Colston Hall, Bristol

Plenty of pop artists have written and performed soundtracks for silent films recently, but few are as fit for the job as Portishead's Adrian Utley and Goldfrapp's Will Gregory. Their groups have always made ambitious, cinematic music, and both men have classical clout – Gregory as a former saxophonist for the London Sinfonietta, and Utley as a composer for film and TV.

This is their first live score together, for a long-lost 1928 expressionist classic. It was found again in 1981, and an ensemble of electric guitars, voices, synthesisers, brass, harp and percussion, conducted by BBC presenter Charles Hazlewood, are here recreating and amplifying its menace and myths.

The eerie whirr of the hall's film projector leads us into the action, but the music begins monotonously. Bass trombones, tuba and drums plod out obvious hints of portent, while shrill sopranos and tenors arrive like godly shorthand. But as Joan's fate darkens,...