High Contrast Cinema
Date: January 2024Category: Getting Started
High Contrast Cinema completed our Launch programme in 2023 and screen hardboiled, Hollywood noir classics at the Allendale Centre in Wimborne.
Getting Started
The area we live in has a rich cinematic history, with dozens of small art deco cinemas built in the days that cinema was booming. Many of these little venues still exist, although in a sad state of repair in some cases!
Matt, whose brainchild this was in the first place, has had a passion for movies from the first time he sat in front of a screen and everyone in the group is a gigantic cinema fan: we have been teaming up to share experiences of the big screen for many years. We grew from a local comic book group, also Matt’s idea.
We had all realised how very valuable the in-person experience of culture is: during the pandemic, we’d continued to get together online to share movies we had watched at home, but the limitations of this way of watching movies were really stark: we wanted to see these movies as they were meant to be seen, on a big screen, in a dark room, with a shared experience - you can’t replace the moment when an audience sees something for the first time and chuckle or gasp together! It’s a perfect moment that only genuine cinema can create.
Programming
Quite quickly, we decided our initial focus would be on Film Noir as we consider it a resilient genre with a broad appeal. We chose an initial trio of movies which aren’t necessarily household names but also not too obscure,trying to seek out the sweet spot of high quality movies you might have heard of but which not everyone will have had the chance to see on the big screen.
Ongoing we’re looking to move out from the film noir genre specifically, to start to show a wider range of classics but we want to build our audience based on true classics which have not be shown on the big screen in our area, potentially for decades. Essentially, we wanted to help our audience to see excellent movies from across the decades as they were meant to be seen - BIG - with that authentic shared experience that can’t be matched at home, for movies which won’t get their chance at a multiplex and/or may not be easy to access via streaming services.
Launch
Abi’s advice and support in the coaching sessions has been absolutely invaluable: an endless source of useful information and guidance, plus a warm and encouraging atmosphere that has made a huge difference to our confidence through this challenge. Financially, the funding has been enormously useful in helping us to try multiple different routes for promoting the first screening, and in allowing us to work with a venue large enough to suit our needs amply rather than trying to squeeze into a smaller venue where the experience would have been less positive.
On Community Cinema
Community cinema means a shared experience: the gasp from the audience when the heroine turns out to be a rotter, the giggles at a perfectly crafted deadpan-delivered quip. It’s the conversations afterwards - when someone tells you they came miles to see this movie and it didn’t disappoint. It’s the camaraderie of a team working to build something together that means sharing your enthusiasms with total strangers, and how those strangers turn into regulars and even friends. It’s being part of a hub, and place with a gravity that draws people in and brings them together to share something that makes us all feel something at once. It’s the scent of popcorn and the motes of dust drifting through a silver beam of light. It’s shared magic.
