British actor Ray Winstone will be the star guest at this year’s Bradford International Film Festival.

The 18th Bradford International Film Festival, in partnership with Virgin Media for the first time, also includes a 60th anniversary celebration of Widescreen Cinerama and a tribute to animation giant Chuck Jones.

Ray Winstone will be looking back on his 30-year career, which began with a seminal performance in Alan Clarke’s borstal drama Scum. The retrospective of his work will include a rare screening of cult film Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, featuring Winstone as the lead singer in a punk band featuring ex-Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and Paul Simonon from The Clash. Also showing will be Sexy Beast, starring Winstone as a retired safe-cracker strong-armed into doing one last job, and Nil by Mouth, Gary Oldman’s searing portrayal of a south London family terrorised by an alcoholic husband played by Winstone.

This year’s festival, at the National Media Museum, is the first programmed by joint festival directors Tom Vincent and Neil Young.

Mr Young said: “The US has got Nick Nolte, Jeff Bridges and Brian Dennehy... we've got Ray Winstone. When you look back through the films and TV he’s made over the last five decades and all the outstanding directors he’s worked with – Scorsese, Spielberg, Minghella, Loach, Zemeckis, all the way back to Alan Clarke – you start to realise what a unique contribution this man has made to our culture and to film in particular.

Back in 1952 in New York, Cinerama delivered a new widescreen cinema experience by simultaneously using three projectors to blaze a huge image across a curved screen. Bradford’s Pictureville is now the only public cinema outside America to feature this historic technology, and BIFF’s Widescreen Weekend is at the heart of this year’s ‘Cinerama is 60’ celebrations.

Screenings include Cinerama’s Russian Adventure, rescued from a basement in 2006 and restored; Ryan’s Daughter and the famous Michael Todd movie Around the World in 80 Days.

The festival celebrates the centenary of the birth of legendary director Chuck Jones, who was behind the adventures of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Road Runner and Daffy Duck, and was at the forefront of Warner Brothers’ ‘golden era’ of animation. Screenings will include Road Runner’s first outing in Fast and Furryous and Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century.

The Dodge Brothers, a skiffle band featuring film critic Mark Kermode on double bass and accompanied by renowned pianist Neil Brand, will provide a live soundtrack to classic 1928 melodrama Beggars of Life, starring Louise Brooks and Wallace Beery.