“Surprise turkeys!”

When we can, we like to find a suitable venue for our film screenings. Last October, we showed Samurai Cop in Broadmead’s Old Police Station, in November, we screened StarCrash at the Bristol Planetarium, and then in September, we hired the MV Balmoral for our Shark Attack 3 event.

It’s not always possible to find a perfect venue for a film, but when we decided to show a martial arts film, we knew we had to screen it in a dojo.

Of course, this wasn’t as easy as we though. While Bristol has several martial arts dojos, many weren’t suitable for a host of reasons – some were too small, some were too far out of town and most just smelt of feet.

And then we found Templegate Dojo.

Tucked away, but near Temple Meads, the dojo was central, had plenty of room, and mostly importantly was run by people that embraced our plans. Many thanks to Michael and the rest of the team for letting us take over the place for the night.

However one problem was that traditionally, most dojos don’t have bars so that meant we were going to get beer in. Enter New Bristol Brewery, who were kind enough to supply us with three casks of their finest ales.

Even luckier for us, it turns out that our audience weren’t the big drinkers we thought they would be and now we have a whole keg left over for ourselves!

The film itself was our first foray into the blaxploitation genre, but with so many cult classic that it has produced, it most likely won’t be our last – although we doubt they’ll have as many midget hit men, bored strippers that appear to wear two sets of underwear, or Jim Kelly backhanding a killer vulture.

Next month, we’re showing festive horror Elves at Bristol Bierkeller and we hope to see you all there! If not, then prepare for Gymkata in January!