“This Way Up was a really great experience for myself and my organisation. It was a really inspirational 2 days with great speakers and panels. It’s the first time I have attended a This Way Up event and unsure how much I was going to take away from the event.  As it turned out it was hard to know what to choose to go along to once it got started as there was so much that was relevant to our charity. I took pages of notes from some sessions and refer back to them still on a regular basis. The 2 days have influenced change in my organisation from the new business plan to decisions on flooring!  Was really useful to hear the similarities and differences in people’s experiences during and outside of the sessions as well.  I would definitely recommend attending to anyone thinking of going along to the next event.”

“Headline figures can disguise a wide variation in the performance of venues – an average of 51 people per show. One fascinating finding is that there is no correlation between the size of a community and the size of audience attracted by its community cinema.  A wide range of other critical success factors are in play.”

“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.

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.”

In September 2017 Rabab Ghazoul, the director ofGentle/Radical organised technical training for BAME women via the ICO Technical Skills for Digital Exhibition, led by Faye Chamberlain of Chapter Arts Centre.

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:

• Does your community centre host playgroup for children?
• Can you do some other family events to make people come to the venue?
• What about second child get little bit of discount for the ticket? Or stamp card, say every time you go to the screening and collect one stamp, if you get 10 stamps one free screening?
• What about the kettle and hot water for the bottle for the baby?
• Can you offer nice breast feeding area for women to feed during the film so nobody is staring at you?
• Any cushions or soft mat for some tired children and baby to lie down and watch?

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.”