Film Power or the Power of Film?

Film, cinema and the moving image are entering a new phase in Scotland with the creation of the Centre for the Moving Image which will incorporate the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the city’s Filmhouse cinema. Mark Cousins and Tilda Swinton have come on board as creative advisors in what feels like another major shift for the landscape of the arts in Scotland.

Meanwhile the hopes of Edinburgh’s grand old lady of cinemas – the Odeon on Clerk Street – have been raised as a group of recent graduates aspire to breath new life into its boarded up auditorium. This feels like a coming of age for Film Studies – a subject I was once told wasn’t a ‘proper’ one. I love that graduates are emerging with energy, passion and the confidence to take a piece of cinema history into their own hands and give it a workable future.

All of this is refreshing news at a time when Hollywood is accused of being too scared to take risks and 3D is already being touted as yesterday’s news. In the week that Warner Bros cancelled the release of the next Harry Potter film in 3D, you have to question whether plans to convert the Star Wars films into 3D are going to rake in the anticipated profits from a cynical audience who are counting the pennies and seen it all before (both 3D and Star Wars).

Other head thumpingly dull news is that James Cameron has toped the Guardian’s Film Power 100 list. Please, please can we have a list of people who are ‘feeling the force’ of film, circumnavigating the industry’s traditional ‘gatekeepers’ and taking its future into their own hands. Let’s have a list that celebrates the likes of the graduates planning a coup of Edinburgh’s old Odeon, the filmmakers who are crowd sourcing footage and finance, the artists who are breathing new life into archive film, mob cinema and the 8 1/2 Foundation.

Film has come of age and its maturity has nothing to do with an expensive in-your-face format, powerful men, or industry veterans squeezing every last penny of profit out of a thirty year old franchise. It has everything to do with people who are passionate about cinema and filmmakers sticking two fingers up at the likes of lists celebrating those who have ‘Film Power’. Because such is the power of film!

Power to the People's Cinema

The Cambridge Film Trust are turning a former Habitat building into the venue for the first People’s Cinema Shopfront Screening. Check out the full story here. I like this idea of cinema heading out into empty buildings and have been thinking about all the old closed up cinemas and wondering if this type of project could breath new, if brief, life into them.

While attending the recent Clicks or Mortar? symposium at Newcastle’s Tyneside I watched filmmaker Paul Emery’s outdoor projection onto Pilgrim Street’s old Odeon cinema. This nostalgic piece projected heritage film footage from the Tyneside film society onto the façade of this decaying old beauty of a cinema.

The mix of old and new worked – or maybe old and old done in a new way. The cinema looked beautiful again for one night only, reminiscent of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. It, like so many boarded up old cinemas, have been ready for their close ups for a long time. But the truth is that if new ways of thinking about cinema, film and all the possibilities of digital culture enabled through a digital projector don’t rescue these crumbing recluses, they will either be demolished, burn down or turned into boutique hotels.

On which note we eagerly await the fate of Edinburgh’s old Odeon, currently being decided upon by Scottish ministers.

RIP Glasgow's Coliseum

Some sad news from Scotland. Glasgow’s former Coliseum which opened in 1905 (originally as a music hall), screened Glasgow’s first talking picture in January 1929, was Scotland’s only Cinerama whose opening was covered by British Pathe News and closed as a cinema in 1980, suffered a very bad fire in the early morning of 25 May. The damage to the building was so bad that demolition work is underway.

In finding out more about this fire I had a skim through the Scottish Cinemas and Theatres Project’s website and browsing through the long list of cinemas at risk and demolished cinemas in Scotland was a sobering read. This prompted me to feel even more anxious for those cinemas who can’t afford digital and could be facing the same fate as so many of the cinemas listed on this website.

The bright side of this blog is the undeniable shift in attitude about digital by many independent cinemas in the UK who are now finally getting to grips with this format’s benefits and possibilities. But the shadow of the hefty price tag simply won’t go away.

Can Virtual Print Fees (VPF) deals and extra revenue from alternative content save the day? Well many UK independents can’t consider 3D as they are too close to a multiplex that already offers, or plans to offer, this content. And do many independent venues want to develop the 15 – 24 year old audience that most 3D films seem to be aimed at?  Of course live opera, theatre and sporting events can make a difference – I’m eagerly awaiting the Tour de France in 3D – but even if this can generate an extra £5,500 per screen per year, where does the initial capitol outlay come from?

As for VPF deals... to me, and many others, they simply reinforce the old model of domination by the major studios and completely smother the flexibility, independence and creative potential of digital. And they could ultimately be all talk and small print.

Since starting this blog Jim Huskey, Outside Sales Manager for Sonic Equipment Company in the US has got in touch. He’s working to encourage independents in the US to seize the day and act now with digital and in doing so embrace the bottom up way of working this format allows. To quote: “The day is arriving where studio content is not the only game in town…. theatres must begin thinking laterally. The seats, screen, sound system, and concessions are already in place. The heating and A/C are keeping the environment comfortable. The restrooms are clean. But without digital equipment, morning seminars, educational programs, or other content is not an option. Without digital, LAN parties lasting from the last showing until noon the next day are not in the mix. Exhibitors need to walk into their houses during off times and ask themselves, "how can I get more mileage from this facility NOW?"

I also like this from Jim: “Independents have to be creative and also must forge a relationship with their markets. Some donate free passes to be given away by disc jockeys - in return for on air recognition. Some deal directly with area schools to build interest through marketing campaigns. One manager shared with me how she got involved with the humane society, dyed a white cat pink, went out to area schools. She raised money and publicity for the humane society and packed her house for the pink panther movie”.

This is the glass half full attitude towards digital. The ‘We Think’ of digital cinema that I blogged about earlier. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sad to see the old cinemas derelict. The image that accompanies this blog is of the old Odeon cinema on Clerk Street, Edinburgh, an old art deco purpose built cinema that the Cinema Theatres Association have described as "the best surviving example of architecture of its time in the UK". Catch the story from the BBC here.

Now I’m as much in love with the golden era of cinema that this building embodies as the next person. And I hate to see these fabulous old buildings derelict, under threat and falling apart. But I know that they can never be what they were and that cinema as an industry has moved on. Digital is forcing us all to move again in a big way and perhaps this leap to the future can save some of old relics from the past. As we move from deco to digital perhaps creative thinking around this new format can breath new life and potential into the countless old cinemas whose dark auditoriums are currently filled with nothing but dust and memories. If it doesn’t, there are going to be a whole lot more demolition of old cinemas in Scotland and beyond.