Jenny McCulloughCinemas in Northern Ireland reopened in May after a year of COVID-19 restrictions that kept most of them closed. During lockdown, Jenny McCullough talked to people with a passion for showing films across NI about the tradition of going to the pictures and the future of cinema. In the third of a four-part series, she meets the founders of Newcastle Community Cinema and Dungannon Film Club to find out what it takes to build a community cinema experience to beat streaming.
Favourites and premiers at Newcastle Community Cinema (NCC)
Matthew Grainger told me that Newcastle Community Cinema (NCC) was born in the pub and that co-founder Rob Manley was the landlord. Discovering a shared “big love of film” that focused on “older slightly stranger, films you wouldn’t get to see on a big screen anywhere in Northern Ireland any time soon, apart from maybe the QFT”, they looked for and found “a few like-minded people” who volunteered to help them ask “what does it actually take to screen a film, to have an audience?” Even at this early stage, Matthew said, one part of the mission was clear: “we wanted something that was going to be at the heart of the community.”
Matthew described it as “hoking around” but what happened next sounds like a thorough investigation of everything that would be needed to put on the show right here, including: licences, permissions, health and safety compliance, screen, projector, sound equipment, film (in the right format). Rather than being put off the idea, Matthew said, “the more we looked into it the more we saw that we could do it if we just had the tenacity and the patience.” The pay-off was a free screening, on 30 October 2009, for NCC’s opening at the Annesley Hall: The Shining. It was a favourite of many committee members but few had been able to watch it on the big screen, and so it emerged to “set the flavour” and become the “house movie”. Unsurprisingly for a free screening, Matthew says, there was a full house.
“The volunteer commitment is a serious one”
With Film Hub NI as “very strong allies”, NCC got “into a bit of a groove of trying to choose titles, seeing what was available” and screening in Annesley Hall at the weekends. There was more paperwork, and some stunt work, with a fabric screen “we used to have to shimmy up into the serious cobwebs to hang and rehang” from the rafters above the stage. But this was nowhere near the summit of ambition. From the foot of the Mournes, committee treasurer and “absolute whizz” Felicia Matheson scoured festival programmes for films from around the world, sometimes leveraging her knowledge of world cinema to pre-empt distribution deals and hold European premieres.
For classic titles, from fright nights to family favourites to singalongs, NCC pioneered event cinema in Northern Ireland. There has been Paddington complete with marmalade sandwiches, a Ghostbusters drive-in, a secret location Hallowe’en screening of Blair Witch Project, and a showing of the Northern Ireland-produced horror comedy Grabbers, which involved making a screen appear from the depths of the Rock Pool to celebrate its 80th birthday. It was, said Matthew, “like putting a kite up”, but well worth the effort to pull off an event that sold out in a couple of hours.
NCC’s gutsiest move in the name of cinematic experience was transferring its screen to St Mary’s Hall, made possible because the parish knew of NCC’s work at the Annesley. The cinema’s new home, on the main street in Newcastle, was raw and empty, “like a box”, when NCC took it over with carte blanche to build:
“We know a lot of handymen and a lot of people that can help us build a cinema so we built the crow’s nest, we spent a few quid we got, we’d got access to funding for a brilliant new screen and pulled together the sound system.”
The new set-up included construction of a scarp or slope for the seating, furnished from a screen in Antrim that was closing down at the time, and creating a theatre with capacity for 300 plus a bar and the space to make NCC’s “what if we did that?” conversations into reality. The foundation for this supply of ideas is the NCC committee and its “twenty-strong hard core of really brilliant volunteers.” Matthew described the rhythm that has developed:
“Everyone serves popcorn … everyone’s been on the corkscrew detail. I always do the intros, Rob always tends to be our main projectionist, Felicia tends to be queen of the box office, so it’s just a family affair.”
Everyone also has full-time jobs and full-on lives outside the cinema although they might do it “for the craic” and “for the love of it”, the volunteer commitment is a serious one.
Recognition has come in different forms, from sweep-the-board performances at the Cinema For All awards, to a shout-out from John Carpenter at the Belfast Film Festival, to a birthday greeting from Dan Lloyd – Danny – for NCC’s tenth anniversary screening of The Shining. But Matthew is proudest of the reward of “community support” and the relationships NCC now has with other community groups. Not that this necessarily makes for solemn charitable endeavour: a Ten Foundations benefit screening paid tribute to its founder and his favourite film with a bowling alley built down the aisle for a showing of The Big Lebowski.
Recovering from the pandemic
When the pandemic struck, Matthew said, NCC was grateful for its capacity and space, and felt for other film clubs and community cinemas in more restricted circumstances. But the doors still had to close. NCC explored all the options for operating under a COVID-19 recovery plan. The committee knew what it took to run a proper drive-in cinema and it just wasn’t feasible: “there were huge amounts of work basically and there was no guarantee of an uptake so as time went by, we were just hoping that we could reopen the doors.” In the meantime, another idea: a film-making competition to run through the summer. Access>CINEMA and Film Hub NI both helped and the winning two-minute films in the Eat My Shorts contest await their screening, which will take place as part of NCC’s annual Full Moon Film Festival, when that can be held.
Full Moon had been due to run in November 2020 and was ready to go, with licences in place to screen seventeen films over two weekends to “acknowledge and implement” social distancing. NHS-trained friends had advised, one-way system signage and hand sanitising stations were in place. It was the day before the festival when NCC learned that the doors couldn’t open for it. Attentive not only to the formal restrictions but of caution among members of the community, Matthew’s hope is that Full Moon can run in an adjusted format in 2021:
“It’s like a re-earning of trust. They’re just going to have to feel comfortable again in what we’re doing, seeing that we’re taking care of everything and realising that this is how they want to consume their films.”
With help from breaks like cut-price licences from Cinema For All’s partner distributor Film Bank, NCC could operate the cinema “really nicely” as a socially distanced setting with fewer seats available around reserved tables, but not, as Matthew says, “to infinity and beyond.”
Like all cinemas, NCC is heading into the unknown, not only because of the effects of the virus itself and the efficacy of a vaccination programme against it, but because of the accelerated rise of streaming services. Like only a few other cinemas, NCC had secured the unexpected Oscar-winner Parasite for the closing night of Full Moon, but it went online for viewing in the summer. Amazing Grace, recently shown by the BBC, was also on the bill. While cinemas remain closed, the impact of the announcement by the giant studio Warner Bros. to release its entire 2021 slate of films simultaneously in cinemas and on its streaming service is yet to emerge, but Matthew’s view is that this is where “the great streaming wars of the early 2020s” begin.
With Jaws as a formative big screen experience and Secret Cinema’s The Empire Strikes Back event as a more recent source of energy and inspiration, Matthew says “bring them on … we keep a better cellar than they do.” Before the pandemic, NCC’s offer of expert programming – “the serious business of watching movies and really pushing the big screen so it’s kind of pure in that way” – and “the good craic” of immersive experiences was already giving people a reason to leave the house. When cinema can return, Matthew said, it will be more important than ever to:
“Spotlight the importance of the fact that these are cinematic releases and as such have to be … enjoyed cinematically, that’s how the filmmaker wants you to enjoy them, so it’s about stirring up that care in film lovers … come on, sit down and watch this with us.”
In the meantime, NCC’s front wall has carried a big picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger and a sign that says “We’ll be back.”
Mixed audiences at Dungannon Film Club
Also on the way back after a locked down year is Dungannon Film Club, a cinema that Matthew and NCC helped to get started. Christopher Begley had the idea, born of frustration that the kind of films he wanted to see were only being shown at QFT, but the impetus came from seeing how it could be done. “I just thought: that’s class,” Christopher said, “that’s exactly what I want to do.” He drove down to Newcastle to see a show and have a chat, and, for one of the first screenings in Dungannon, borrowed some of NCC’s Big Lebowski kit.
A lot fell into place for the film club to open in 2013, like Dungannon getting an arts centre, the Ranfurly, with its Square Box space that was “perfect” for showing films. Christopher was able to concentrate on “figuring out how to get the licences for movies” and getting a team together. He rounded up the usual suspects among his friends and family and then, when he met Barry Mullan at a wedding and told him about the cinema plan, got a co-founder and made a great friend.
With advice from Cinema For All and support from the Ranfurly and the council, the next thing to sort out was the programme. Christopher was able to make his original idea happen, programming “small release independents” and foreign language films and winning more support for exhibiting films that might not otherwise be shown in a cinema, and show “event movies” like The Big Lebowski and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Looking through the film club guide from 2013, Christopher listed Bicycle Thieves, The Princess Bride, Taxi Driver, The Hunt and Das EXPERIMENT. “So yeah,” he said, “even our first programme wasn’t too bad.”
The audience for these films has been “a bit of a mix”, with some people picking and choosing titles and other “key regulars … who come whenever they can regardless”, although, in the eight years that the cinema has been running, as Christopher — who now has a young family — readily acknowledges, people’s circumstances change and there is turnover in the audience. Like NCC, Dungannon Film Club put itself on the map with drive-in screenings that people in the town still talk about, and by winning national awards.
It may be a small loss in the bigger picture of the pandemic, but it’s still sad to think about how 2020 might have looked. After a quiet time, Dungannon Film Club had been “building up steam again”. Some screenings were sparsely attended, but they were averaging at about 30 people. And they were set to show Parasite, which had been picked out by film club programmers well before it became an Oscar prospect. The model of programming films to screen after their big theatrical release but before they were released on DVD or to stream, was one that Dungannon Film Club had used to great effect, so Christopher was worried about the impact of the pandemic and film studios’ move to simultaneous releases, and not only from a film club point of view: “it would be devastating for the industry if that’s sustained after this pandemic.”
Restrictions put cinema in a new perspective
Like everyone else I spoke to about cinema in Northern Ireland, Christopher was quick to praise Film Hub NI for its support and encouragement through the pandemic. The encouragement was much needed, Christopher said. Before the pandemic, he spent a lot of time in and around the town where he runs a business. People often stopped to ask what was on or coming up at the cinema, and he has missed that interaction, so contact with the Film Hub and other cinemas and clubs saw him “a wee bit re-enthused” and looking forward to reopening:
“I’ll definitely be excited to put something together … everything’s been held back so much that people are going to miss so many films … there’s the opportunity to cherry-pick a good programme out of stuff that people haven’t seen.”
It’s a long way from his early cinema memory of sitting on the floor of an overbooked showing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and from the experience of seeing The Matrix without so much as having watched the trailer, but, Christopher said, these are the things that “must have been working away on my subconscious”. The common theme is the shared experience of the cinema and that, he said, had become more important as mobile, social media and streaming technology overtook the twenty-first century:
“It’s said to us quite often, ‘If I’d have put that on the TV at home, I’d have turned it off after 20 minutes.’ People don’t have the concentration. They’re maybe not willing to give something that’s a bit more challenging or maybe a slower start the chance to develop, whereas if you’re in the cinema and the first 20 minutes is a bit slow you persevere and you could end up seeing the best movie you’ve seen all year.”
The pandemic shut cinemas and film clubs, depriving people of that experience and accelerating change in the film industry. But the restrictions have also put the cinema into a new perspective. As Christopher said:
“The opportunity to leave the house and have two or three hours to watch a movie makes the film club seem all the more important now … you know it’s going to be a great opportunity to sit down and get a bit of a break … so bring it back!”
