Northern Slant GuestTo mark #QFT50, the head of Queen’s Film Theatre Joan Parsons writes for Northern Slant.
Do you remember as a kid, sitting perched on the edge of plush red seats, eyes wide and mouth just slightly open, hands usually sticky from popcorn, staring at the incredible adventures played across the screen?
Or as an adult, stumbling out of those darkened rooms, hands probably still sticky from popcorn (no one grows out of loving popcorn), dealing with that slightly odd feeling you get when you realise the sun has set while you were off in an entirely different world?
Cinema isn’t like other artforms. It has an amazing ability to take us far away from the mundane existence of day to day life. Some of the best movies bring us to a world we could never have dreamed of and keep us there, shutting us off from reality for even just a little while.
Tonight, to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Queen’s Film Theatre we’re showing Viva Maria! a 1960s slapstick comedy starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau about two turn of the-century vaudevillians who get mixed up with Mexican revolutionaries. It is a “rollicking, comic adventure opus impeccably brought off by director Louis Malle” that incidentally features Bardot as the daughter of an Irish radical and is the first movie that was ever shown at QFT.
It’s the kind of movie that takes you away from the real world, but cinema doesn’t just exist for escapism.
While cinema has the ability to show us the wonderful, the beautiful and the surreal, it also has the power to reveal the harsh, the unforgiving and the cruel. On Sunday we showed Bloodyminded, a riveting investigation of the consequences of war, stylistically as far removed from the world of Viva Maria! as it is possible to get, although perhaps not so far removed in message.
As the first ever interactive full-length feature film made in the UK, Bloodyminded is also a cutting-edge piece of work that challenges the cinematic form and raises questions about the cinema of the future.
At QFT that’s the expanse of films that we aim to show, from 1960’s slapstick to cutting edge 21st Century films that are inspired by the brutality of the First Word War and its continuing resonance today as young people continue to be faced with moral issues.
Our willingness to present challenging film, the diversity of our programme and our proud heritage of showing films that aren’t shown anywhere else in Northern Ireland has put QFT at the heart of cultural life in Belfast. Our reputation for excellent programming has brought generations of film lovers through our doors as audience members, friends and sometimes even employees.
Aislinn Clarke is one of those people. Aislinn worked here as an usher while she was a student at QUB. We’re delighted to be showing her debut, “The Devils Doorway”, the first ever horror movie directed by an Irishwoman as part of QFT50.
As Aislinn said in a blog on our website “the QFT is able to take risks in programming—in fact, it is obliged to—and it is that which allows it to take risks on local filmmakers, new talents, and independent spirits”. Supporting local and independent talent is a vital part of the cinema’s ethos.
It’s an ethos that has survived some dark and turbulent times.
There’s something in the soul of the QFT that gives it a deep connection with Belfast. It’s a cinema that simply couldn’t exist anywhere else. There’s a synergy between the cinema and the city, fueled by the films, events and talks that we host, that reaches out to the public far beyond our building in University Square making QFT an integral part of the cultural history of this place.
Recently in Derry/Londonderry, an event was held to commemorate fifty years since the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. QFT opened less than two weeks after that movement began.
Throughout the tumultuous years of the troubles, QFT survived the same dangers and setbacks as the rest of the city. Cinema has played a vital role in telling the stories of the conflict, especially after 1998, and we’ve recently explored that idea through a talk on “Stories from the Troubles”.
Today, just like fifty years ago, Northern Ireland looks to an uncertain future. Political stalemate, Brexit, climate change, it seems every day there is a new story about the uncertainties and dangers we face. Unfortunately, what was true then is still true now to some extent albeit differently.
For the last fifty years the people of Northern Ireland, regardless of what else is happening, have come to the QFT to experience something they can’t find anywhere else. Even while bombs exploded across the city the people of Belfast sought out the special experience you can only find in the cinema. We are very proud that they could find it here.
Over the years the QFT has provided a haven for people to escape to in order to view the world through a different lens, have their spirits lifted, view lives and cultures different to their own and to find filmic experiences that makes them think about what it means to be human.
At QFT we’re proud of our history, but we’re even prouder still of our commitment to the future. We will always take risks, we will always show films that other cinemas don’t screen. We hope that whenever someone in Belfast wants to find a film that reminds them of the power of cinema that they will find it here and we expect that to continue long in to the future.
