Film clubs provide young people with a rare opportunity to be part of something fun, creative and sociable. Sabrina Broadbent reports on an exciting initiative to give more children the chance to get involved.
Ask anyone over the age of 40 if they had a film club at school, and the chances are they will tell you that they did and it’ll be hard to stop them telling you what they saw. They’ll remember the teacher, the magic of having a familiar space transformed into a screening event, and they’ll always remember the film.
Sadly, those film clubs in the 60s and 70s rarely lasted long - sourcing the film reels was difficult and expensive, lacing up the projector was complicated, sound systems were unreliable and the teacher usually worked alone without support or encouragement. Nevertheless, the films that were screened remain as memorable events in the minds of the young people who saw them.
What is a film club?
A film club, like a reading group, is an intimate and informal gathering where people can encounter ideas, experiences and emotions that may not be everyday topics of discussion but which shape all our lives.
Film is a vast vault of stories stretching back one hundred years, across every continent and told in every language. It is an extraordinary cultural asset, yet British children see practically nothing of it. The theatrical releases represent a tiny and culturally skewed percentage of this archive of creative and intellectual endeavour.
Since its roll out in Spring 2008, FILMCLUB has curated and made available thousands of films to state schools. The idea behind FILMCLUB, brainchild of film director, Beeban Kidron and educationalist, Lindsay Mackie, was to give every child the chance to watch one film a week, free of charge, from beginning to end, with a chance to talk about it afterwards.