One aspiration that I have for my career going forward is to be involved in programming and curating film screenings and events related to this. I’m really passionate about platforming and sharing films with others, and organising screenings is something that I think is really valuable. To not only platform films and give a new audience for filmmakers, but also to allow people to see and gain inspiration from a wide range of films, and meet other filmmakers and creatives.
As I and my coursemate Lysander Wong were already running projects and workshops together as our collective, Bugbyte, and we had known for a while that we were both interested in running screening events, we decided to start by running a film club here at CSM for current MACA students. This set-up gave us an opportunity to gain experience running screenings with fairly low stakes, as we could take advantage of the classroom space and the library’s film and video resources, as well as some screening recommendations from tutors. So far we have run approximately 5 film club sessions, we learnt and gained a lot from the experience, including gaining confidence with using the screening equipment and hosting public events, increased knowledge of animated films, both contemporary and historical, and in planning and scheduling.
On the 5th of May we got the opportunity to host a screening for the general public, held at Atlas Cinema in Brixton. We responded to an open call looking for people to programme screenings for their summer programme and were accepted. Although we had previously run public workshops, this was the first time that we had run a public screening and it required a lot of planning and organisation. We reached out to more than 10 filmmakers, only one of which we already knew personally, and in the end were able to programme 9 short films. A couple of filmmakers never got back to us which was a little disappointing but to be expected, and we had planned for this likelihood. We also planned and created posters and social media posts to share the event, organised the ticket sales, and handled the full technical side of the screening on the day, alongside hosting.
The event itself was as successful as we had hoped. It was really rewarding to see a full screening of guests really enjoying and resonating with the films we had programmed, and to see the conversations between people meeting at the event. This has definitely further cemented that programming screenings and events is something that I would like to pursue more in the future.
