A consortium of local community cinemas in the region have been working on a season of on-line films and panel sessions which will be running from 13th August 2020 until 6th September 2020.
Now that cinemas have only just started to re-open after the lockdown, the community cinemas wanted to make as wide a range of films available to people in the region to watch on-line as cinema screenings might be reduced due to social distancing restrictions.
The South West Media Factory, the Catstrand, and Driftwood Cinema have been working together with programmers from Regional Screen Scotland on a film festival called ‘Engage’ to the region, which will be either free or ‘Pay what you Can’ to ensure that the screenings are accessible to as many people as possible.
“We were devastated when we had to cancel our film festival and regular monthly screenings,” said Belle Doyle of the South West Media Factory
“We had spent a year setting up the company, getting funding and negotiating with the Theatre Royal, who were really keen to run screenings. The lockdown couldn’t have come at a worse time!” The season begins with the Catstrand’s series of films celebrating the Black Lives Matters movement, with ‘The Stuart Hall Project’, a documentary looking at Stuart Hall, an important figure in the fields of cultural and race studies. Other screenings include a film from the National Library of Scotland looking at the region as it was in the 1970s, at 6pm on 20th August, Spaceship Earth on 28th August with a discussion about our own Biosphere in the South West of Scotland on 26th August, a fantastic selection of short films from Glasgow Short Film Festival on 1st September, and an exciting mystery film as our final film
There are more details at the @SWMediaFactory Facebook Page or search using the hashtag #Engage on Twitter and Facebook.
