The unlike­ly rise of the Free Film Festivals

“Come ear­ly”, a vol­un­teer warned, ​“it’ll be busy.” Opti­mistic, I thought, for a screen­ing of a lit­tle-known B‑movie in the base­ment of a church on a Wednes­day evening. I arrived 20 min­utes ear­ly to St Giles Church in Cam­ber­well. ​“I’m here for the film,” I told the man on the door. He looked con­cerned. ​“There might be some stand­ing room avail­able.” Down in the crypt, every pos­si­ble van­tage point appeared to have been tak­en, so I shuf­fled behind two pil­lars and sloped my shoul­ders, lean­ing into the man next to me.

Sarah, one of the pro­gram­mers for Cam­ber­well Free Film Fes­ti­val (CFFF), climbed on stage to whoops from the crowd. She intro­duced the film, the 1962 fan­ta­sy-hor­ror Car­ni­val of Souls, with affec­tion, wit and the pre­emp­tive flat­tery that it would only appeal to the dis­cern­ing con­sumer of cult movies. The film played. We laughed at the abrupt dia­logue, heck­led the sex­ist char­ac­ters, but for the most part main­tained a respect­ful silence befit­ting a ghost sto­ry. The next night we did it all over again, this time with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

On the walk home I passed a swim­ming pool, hair salons, an Islam­ic Cen­tre, kebab shops, a Cit­i­zens Advice Bureaux, and imag­ined these neigh­bour­hood insti­tu­tions trans­formed into cin­e­mas. This year alone, CFFF has screened films in pubs, libraries, church­es, schools, bike shops, cafes and foot­ball clubs. So why not play Deep End in a swim­ming pool, Steel Mag­no­lias in a salon, or Erin Brock­ovich in a law cen­tre? This is the pow­er of the Free Film Fes­ti­vals: they trans­form space, mak­ing it tem­porar­i­ly pub­lic and, in the process, open­ing up the pos­si­bil­i­ties of urban communities.

The Free Film Fes­ti­vals phe­nom­e­non start­ed in Peck­ham and Nun­head, south-east Lon­don, in 2010. Founder Neil Johns, along with two friends, decid­ed that month­ly film clubs weren’t enough. They want­ed to take films into schools, parks and hous­ing asso­ci­a­tions, active­ly seek­ing out new audi­ences. No one planned for the idea to spread across the city, but soon New Cross and Dept­ford want­ed their own screen­ings, and then Cam­ber­well and Herne Hill.

Over the next five years, events sprung up across Lon­don under the Free Film Fes­ti­vals ban­ner. The organ­i­sa­tion is, undoubt­ed­ly, gain­ing momen­tum. Atten­dance has risen year on year. There are five new fes­ti­vals start­ing in 2016: Charl­ton and Wool­wich, Black­horse Road in Waltham­stow, Streatham, Cat­ford and For­est Hill. This year the Free Film Fes­ti­vals for­mat was export­ed to a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, SOAS, organ­ised in part by Neil’s son. Every­one I’ve spo­ken to about the net­work is ambi­tious for its expan­sion. Neil talks about Free Film Fes­ti­vals in remote islands of the West Coast of Scot­land, and in small Mid­lands towns. The key chal­lenge now is offer­ing ade­quate sup­port for any­one who wants to start their own festival.

The Fes­ti­vals go some way to fill­ing London’s hol­lowed out film land­scape. South London’s cin­e­mas in par­tic­u­lar have suf­fered heav­i­ly since the 1980s. Vic­tor, anoth­er chief CFFF pro­gram­mer, gave me a pot­ted his­to­ry of the cin­e­mas in Ele­phant and Cas­tle, Cam­ber­well and Lewisham, wax­ing nos­tal­gic about the art deco archi­tec­ture and late-night screen­ings. He con­cedes that the most impor­tant fea­ture of the fes­ti­val is its acces­si­bil­i­ty – the ​‘Free’ part – at a time when cin­e­ma audi­ences are becom­ing increas­ing­ly resent­ful of high tick­et prices.

Of course, low atten­dances are in part down to the explo­sion of dig­i­tal view­ing plat­forms. Online stream­ing and VOD ser­vices offer a more democ­ra­tised, bespoke view­ing expe­ri­ence. But right beside this exists the cul­ture of pira­cy and ille­gal file shar­ing. There is an entire com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who are used to pay­ing noth­ing for films and work­ing to make them wide­ly avail­able. The spir­it of the dig­i­tal com­mons is present in the public’s inter­ac­tion with the Free Film Fes­ti­vals, which strives to con­nect the shrink­ing of pub­lic spaces with a desire for a cul­tur­al com­mons. While young peo­ple under­stand this some­thing for noth­ing, col­lec­tive spir­it, they’re also thirsty for a return to the cin­e­ma: watch­ing movies remains, fun­da­men­tal­ly, a com­mu­nal experience.

Some of the fes­ti­vals have a dis­tinct­ly polit­i­cal feel. Dept­ford and New Cross, which kicks off next week, is return­ing to hous­ing co-ops and com­mu­ni­ty libraries, and show­ing films about aus­ter­i­ty, inequal­i­ty, cli­mate change and the finan­cial crash. Else­where, the pro­gram­ming is less obvi­ous­ly polit­i­cal. Vic­tor argues that CFFF’s screen­ing of Rocks in My Pock­ets addressed the long neglect­ed issue of men­tal health. But most peo­ple I spoke to were keen to high­light the absence of any over­ar­ch­ing polit­i­cal frame­work. One CFFF pro­gram­mer, Hay­at, said it was most­ly a chance to go to the pub for a week. Neil agreed that the bot­tom line was that the process is fun for every­one involved. I met John at the open­ing night of CFFF, just before a screen­ing of Good Vibra­tions. He’s an evan­gel­i­cal stal­wart of the Free Film Fes­ti­vals scene; he claimed, sin­cere­ly, that the organ­i­sa­tion had changed his life, intro­duc­ing him to impor­tant peo­ple in his life.

All of these accounts point towards the true polit­i­cal spir­it of the fes­ti­val, which tran­scends the films that are shown. The fes­ti­val is a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of peo­ple to pro­vide autonomous­ly for them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ty. As the web­site attests, Free Film Fes­ti­vals isn’t a char­i­ty, NGO, net­work, or com­pa­ny – it’s a ​‘move­ment’.

The 1960s saw the emer­gence of film co-ops, which empha­sised demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­gram­ming and avant-garde exper­i­men­ta­tion. The Free Film Fes­ti­vals clear­ly builds on this tra­di­tion with its empha­sis on bot­tom-up organ­i­sa­tion and the reclaim­ing of pub­lic space. But it draws on more pop­ulist tra­di­tions too. There’s some­thing of the grind­house about the events, a punk­ish dis­re­gard for com­fort or aes­thet­ic per­fec­tion. And there’s a deep­er strain, too, one that runs from post-war years, when cin­e­ma atten­dance was at its high­est and film cul­ture was a cor­ner­stone of work­ing class social life. There’s that spir­it of a cheap night out – pure recre­ation, noth­ing else, moments of lux­u­ry among life’s anxieties.

CFFF closed with a screen­ing of 2015’s fire­brand trans quest movie Tan­ger­ine in an LGBTQ-friend­ly pub. On the way to the bus stop I let my imag­i­na­tion roam again. I looked past the bet­ting shops and quick loan com­pa­nies, and saw the com­mu­ni­ty church­es, the pen­sion­ers asso­ci­a­tions and fam­i­ly restau­rants. Only in my day­dream state, these places had become hubs of activ­i­ty – cul­ture, dis­cus­sion, friend­ship. The real achieve­ment of Free Film Fes­ti­vals is not to show movies, but to show us the places we live. Look up from the movies on our phones and we’ll dis­cov­er that the world is a cin­e­ma – we just need to claim it.

The Cam­ber­well Free Film Fes­ti­val ran from 31 March to 10 April. The Dept­ford and New Cross Free Film Fes­ti­val will run from 22 April to 1 May.

Infor­ma­tion about all oth­er Free Film Fes­ti­val events, and how to set one up in your com­mu­ni­ty, can be found at freefilm​fes​ti​vals​.org

Sam Thomp­son is edi­tor of Whitey on the Moon