2023 Season Membership: £22 / Guest Tickets – £7.50 (both available on the door)
UK – Documentary – Year: 2022 – Running time: 95 mins
Language: English
Audience Response (9 returned)
- ‘Excellent’: 5 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 4 votes
- ‘Good’: 0 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 0 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
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Synopsis
Bradford Movie Makers is one of the oldest amateur filmmaking clubs in the world. Once a thriving community, these days the membership is dwindling and the group struggles to keep the wolf from the door. An enthralling story and full of moving characters.
Comes together as a wistful reflection on the power of cinema and community in the face of adversity.
Marina Ashioti (Little White Lies)
Director/Writer: Kim Hopkins
Main Cast:
| Colin Egglestone | Harry Nicholls |
| Joe Ogden | Jeanette Wilson |
| Phil Wainman | Ian Egglestone |
| Andrew Cockerill | Marie McCahery |
| Judith Simpson | Ian J. Simpson |
(for full cast list, reviews and more information, see IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
Chelmsford Film Club Notes:
Bradford Movie Makers was formed in 1932, one of numerous amateur film making societies in the north of England and now the oldest surviving one: ‘a region that might have rivalled Hollywood were it not for the disruption of the war’, as one member put it. A bit far-fetched? Maybe, given the absence of acres of desert in which to build vast and, at the time, ‘temporary’ sheds, California light and a market that craved entertainment in the form of escapism and romance. Though undoubtedly Bradford had other attractions….
In the BMM’s heyday of the 1960s and 70s members were making home movies on Super 8, some of the scratchy memories presented in this little gem of a documentary. Today the club is on its uppers. Membership is just about in double figures: they haven’t paid the rent on their clubhouse for five years and the building itself is shedding chunks of masonry and plaster, its creaking stairs a looming hazard to the limbs of its increasingly doddery regulars.
These remaining members, lovingly represented here by Kim Hopkins, are fuelled by bickering, biscuits and cinephillia, while still seeing the club as a life-line. They weather bereavements, loneliness and fiercely argued creative differences within its peeling walls.
“A warm-funny celebration of community and friendship…[the members] chasing their quixotic dreams of making (very cheap) movies.”
(James Jackson:The Times (UK)).
“You could imagine a BBC sitcom series inspired by this. Give Bill Nighy a few more years and he’d be perfect to play Colin.”
(Cath Clarke: The Guardian).
“A profoundly poignant film about coming to terms with mortality while finding great comfort in the permanent life of flickering images.”
(Kevin Maker: the Times (UK)).