BRIDPORT’s unique film festival, From Page to Screen runs until 26th April, with screenings and talks at Bridport Arts Centre and the Electric Palace. The programme includes several films which share a focus on space exploration in fact and fiction, looking into the future and at the reality of space travel.

This theme includes a gala creening at the arts centre of the 1968 sci-fi drama 2001: A Space Odyssey (pictured), on Saturday 25th April at 7.30pm.

Founded in 2009 and organised by Bridport Arts Centre, this is the UK’s only film festival dedicated to celebrating and exploring the adaptation of books into films. Each year the festival screens a wide range of classic and contemporary films and hosts discussions with filmmakers, writers, curators and other key film industry professionals.

This year the curator is the award-winning screenwriter and best-selling novelist Chris Chibnall, who opened the festival starring in a special Desert Island Scripts, when he discussed the power of great scripts and shared some favourite clips.

Other highlights include Gus van Sant’s new film Dead Man’s Wire (2025), in which the acclaimed director brings his trademark style and relevance to an old school thriller, starring a deliciously unhinged Bill Skarsgård.

Sci-fi features agin in the still chillingly relevant Fahrenheit 451 (released in 1966) at the arts centre on Thursday 23rd April. And there is a documentary about space on Sunday 26th, when the 2024 film Spacewoman will be shown, and introduced by its director Hannah Berryman. The film follows the career of Colonel Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command a U.S. Space Shuttle.

Through archival footage, interviews, and family perspectives, it explores her four space missions, the challenges she faced as a pioneering woman in a male-dominated field, and the dangers and demands of space travel. It also reflects on her legacy in the context of today’s space exploration, highlighting how current missions and emerging commercial space ventures continue to build on the groundwork she helped establish.