“This was the first film festival I’d attended and it was an incredible experience. I felt privileged to have had access to exciting, relevant films, and to be able to bring many of them home to the audiences of the film club.
One of the things that really excited and impressed me was the platforming and position of female film makers. It’s incredibly refreshing that time is taken to curate film screenings made by women who are largely ignored in the film industry. I was particularly excited to meet director Lana Wilson, who I greatly admire.”
In September, 2017, Wicked Young Programmers, Lacey Small, Scarlett and Natasha, spent the day at the Welsh National Opera‘s screening of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ interviewing audience members, to create this short film below with Liam Martin.
Wicked Young Programmers was created in partnership with Wicked International Youth Film Festival as part of the BFI Young FAN project. Wicked links up with students in their rural local area of Rhyl to offer them the chance to to run the Wicked Cinema and gain skills to have a job in the media industry.
Cinemas across the UK recognised World Alzheimer’s Month, with dementia friendly cinema events throughout September 2017 and beyond.The movement was led by Film Hub Wales with film screenings supported by the eight BFI Film Audience Network (FAN) Hubs across the UK, who provide dementia-friendly guidance, training and support to cinema operators.
On September 22, 2017, Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff, organised a day of film, information sessions, awareness raising and more to celebrate World Alzheimer’s Month, which included a dementia-friendly screening of ‘The Sound of Music’, with warm up by Goldies choir and an interval with tea and biscuits.
Silvia Sheenan, Off Y Grid’s Coordinator (to 2017) attended the ICO Cultural Cinema Exhibition course in 2017. Here’s how she got on:
The course was an widespread overview of cinema exhibition, consisting of several different sessions covering topics such as distribution, exhibition, commercial programming, curatorial, marketing, programming for your audience, finding audiences, festivals, diversity and much more.
I learnt that there are several things worth keeping in mind when promoting titles in the future. Creating partnerships with media outlets is important, this can include freelance journalists, and even local businesses and community groups. This is especially relevant in North Wales due to a spread out population so it makes sense to join forces in the local area.
Market research is important. Explore the venue with customers eyes to understand the customer journey, demographics, programme, physical space, ease of booking – being honest about what can be done immediately, in the future, or not at all.
There are nuances to targeting to audiences. Striking the balance of providing specific, strand-based content, whilst also growing audiences and encouraging more diverse or ‘risky’ viewings.
When considering programming you can use archive and AMI films to complement and diversify existing programme, being creative, providing context, blending with the curatorial.
“When we started programming films for the Festival last year, we found it difficult and limiting working with full-time cinemas. They were expensive to hire, but even more importantly the windows of opportunities to screen extra films around their regular programming was limiting. This was unresponsive to our festival’s needs. We also needed to hire the equipment from South Wales.
Then we got in contact with The Little Theatre, which offered an affordable and flexible venue. They were also keen to see films screened again after a gap of over 50 years.”
“As a programmer, it is always exciting to hear about Welsh filmmakers with a film ready for screening. Initially this was the reason to investigate Destination Unknown as the film’s producer and main creative force, Llion Roberts, is based locally.
Pretty soon it became clear that this was no ordinary film, and Llion was no ordinary film maker. You could say that Destination Unknown is a labour of love as Llion’s background is more rooted in satellite technology and equipment hire services than traditional film production. However, that would give you the wrong impression of what the finished film actually is. It took Llion 15 years to make this film and I have no hesitation in calling him a film artist on the strength of this production.
Another strong reason to screen the film was the unique ability cinema has in successfully transmitting certain stories and histories to the audience. At times, this film is overwhelmingly harrowing and something that a normal television screening could never contain. Some human stories need to be communicated communally in a shared space; in a space of togetherness and stories from the Holocaust are such stories. In fact, I would actively encourage other cinemas in Wales to book this film for this precise reason – its natural home is in the cinema.”
Eiko Meredith:
“This was my second time attending and I really enjoyed it. Kotatsu festival is bit different from the community cinema, still there are lots of things I learned from the event and meeting new people. Always great to see people who love films, so passionate about hosting the screenings! I have to start watching more films!!
All speakers are great, I really found Toby and Neil from Moviola were great. They explained really well about lots of things such rights, how to track films which we tend to have a problem with.
It is very interesting to hear how hard it is to host a successful screening for children, family. As a mother of two, I would like to point out if people are used to coming to a community centre, I am sure these film screenings can be more successful:
Just little bit extra, it doesn’t have to be expensive and can bring more people to the screening, and they might come back again in the future.
“This is the second time I have attended the Rural Community Cinema Conference in the wonderful setting of Hay on Wye in Richard Booth’s envy-inducing Bookshop Cinema. The event provides a great opportunity to network with other venues and societies – always fascinating to hear their stories of what films have worked for them and share the important issues, such as how much to charge for a glass of wine!
At this year’s conference it was especially interesting to hear about the Into Film project and to meet the Young Programmers – really inspiring in terms of how it will help us move towards encouraging more young people to be involved with the Dragon Theatre, as audience and event promoters.
During the event I spoke a few words to the conference about the Cinegi Arts & Film project, explaining how we had piloted a few events and were looking forward to running more in the future. Some other groups had shown Cinegi titles and others were about to, so it was good to share experiences.”
I always come away from these events buzzing with ideas.
“The one-day event, organised by Film Hub Scotland, featured introductions by Nicola Kettlewood (venue representative) and Carolyn Mills from Film Hub Scotland, which was a motivating start to the day. This was followed by the first case study – Discovery Film Festival, with a talk from Mike Tait and Discovery Young ambassadors. The second case study was Cutting East Film Festival. These were two interesting case studies. I got useful information from Mike Tait explaining the 12 month plan for his ambassadors and it was good to hear from the enthusiastic ambassadors themselves. We then had a presentation from YP Initiatives Hannah Higginson from Watershed, which dealt more with the statistics of the venue.
Matt Beere from Chapter got us all up and working with an interactive workshop, which went down well. It was also Useful opportunity to chat to other team members as well. Douglas Greenwood from Edinburgh FF and Jonathan Caicedo-Galindo from Cutting East FF gave a talk on ‘Progression for Young Film Makers’. Finally Dan Thomas, co-ordinator for the YP Network gave an honest and useful view of the challenges setting up Young Programmers Groups and sustaining them.”
Young people (aged 16 – 24) were invited to Flatpack, to expand their film horizons, develop their networks and pick up practical skills from seasoned YouTubers and film professionals.
Participants explored and discovered a diverse range of events through Flatpack Film Festival and produced their own festival vlog as part of a unique two day workshop on Sat 23rd and Sun 24th April 2016 in Birmingham. Here they are talking about their experiences in their own vlogs!
