Youth rebellion reaches Plymouth’s big screen

The BFI FAN season Rip It Up is bringing a programme about youth culture and rebellion to cinemas around the UK, including Plymouth. Running mainly between May and October 2026, it looks at the ways young people have expressed themselves through music, fashion, friendship, protest, nightlife and film. The programme moves from post-war teenagers and the Teddy Boys through to punk, rave culture, activism and the complicated business of growing up. It is supported by National Lottery funding through the BFI and forms part of a wider year of cinema activity marking 75 years of youth culture on screen.

In Plymouth, the main venue is Plymouth Arts Cinema, at Arts University Plymouth on Tavistock Place. Its local project, Rip It Up – Cut and Paste!, combines film, zine-making and archive material to look at the relationship between young people and the city. A street-photography and zine-making workshop at Fotonow is scheduled from Friday 18 September to Saturday 26 September 2026. The cinema’s auditorium seats 118 people, and its programme is selected by Director and Film Programmer Anna Navas. Tickets are generally £9, with concessions and over-60s tickets at £7.75, matinees at £7, and £4 tickets for people aged 25 and under, Arts University Plymouth staff and students, and unwaged or low-income audiences. Online bookings carry a £1.50 transaction fee, waived for members. The Box Office is generally open Tuesday to Friday from 5pm to 8:30pm and Saturday from 1pm to 8:30pm, although individual listings should be checked before travelling.

The Plymouth screenings give the season a distinctly local angle. On Friday 2 October, W: A Return to Oz follows an amateur filmmaker exploring the remains of The Warehouse, a Plymouth rave venue from the 1990s, using archive footage and personal memories. A live Q&A with the director is planned. The same evening also brings Hippies & Hooligans – Yesterday’s Westcountry Youth, an archive-based film about the lives and expectations of young people in the region 50 or 60 years ago. On Friday 16 October, Blue Juice heads to the screen, with its 1990s Cornish surf setting and cast including Sean Pertwee, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Ewan McGregor. The Plymouth strand closes, in the information currently available, with Free Party, A Folk History on Friday 23 October. Aaron Trinder’s documentary traces the free-party movement from the late 1980s and early 1990s, including sound-system culture, the Castlemorton festival and the legislation that followed.

These films sit alongside the season’s wider themes, which include coming-of-age stories such as East Is East, Bend It Like Beckham and Rocks, protest-focused titles including Quadrophenia, Pride and This Is England, and nightlife films such as Young Soul Rebels, Trainspotting and Human Traffic. The BFI FAN programme also includes Ish, Imran Perretta’s debut feature about two 12-year-old friends whose relationship changes after a police stop and search. For Plymouth audiences, though, the combination of local archive, rave history, regional youth stories and hands-on zine-making makes the city’s contribution particularly focused on place. Full season information and participating venues are available through the BFI FAN listings, while Plymouth Arts Cinema remains the place to check screening times and book tickets.