The unlikely rise of the Free Film Festivals | Little White Lies

Festivals

The unlike­ly rise of the Free Film Festivals

13 Apr 2016

Words by Sam Thompson

Crowded city square at night, with people gathered in front of illuminated buildings.
Crowded city square at night, with people gathered in front of illuminated buildings.
Ever want­ed to start your own film fes­ti­val? All you need is an emp­ty space and a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty spirit.

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

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