Eiko Meredith from Kotatsu Animation Festival and Allison Williams from Dragon Theatre, Barmouth share their experiences of the annual Film Hub Wales Rural and Community Cinema event:
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.
Allison Williams:
“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.