Handle With Care | First Impressions

What does a Film Programmer do? I talk to James McEvoy to find out what programming the Warwick Arts Centre cinema, a three-screen cinema, based on a university campus but also serving a local and regional audience, involves. Who is the audience and how to build new ones is part of the conversation. We touch on Flatpack, the MAC, the Mockingbird, Square-Eye TV, Lock Studios, Steven Knight, the Forward Film Festival. James tells me about licenses and knowing who holds the rights to a film, which is sometimes confusing while underlining he is uninterested in gate-keeping, actively seeking collaborations and stressing the importance of getting the word out.

We spend a considerable time discussing the exciting new programme: there will be live opera and theatre projections; BFI funded seasons; the opportunity of seeing films financed by Netflix on a big screen. Programmes to look out for are the Silent Cinema screenings with live accompaniment, the melodrama season, Richard Dyer speaking on Brief Encounter, and more.

Each year there’s an over-arching theme across the whole of the Arts Centre. This year the focus is on care. The film programme component is called is ‘Handle with Car,’ with a substrand on ‘Cozy Classics’, which will involve screening a classic film once a month. There will be tea and biscuits – feel free to BYOB (Blanket not Booze) — an opportunity for people to get together and see movies on a big screen. The Arts Centre will also be bringing its 35mm projector back into action for the November screening of Cinema Paradiso. Part of another strand of the Care programme is ‘Care Behind the Scenes,’ co-programmed with Dr. Alice Pember and Dr. Polina Zelmanova, which will also have workshops as well as screenings (e.g. intimacy co-ordination’).

The Programme will include Accessible and Inclusive screenings as well as Audio-Description (for first time at the Art Centre) and there will be some workshops attached to this strand as well.

James stresses that the programming also takes on board an exploration of the local and the national with focus on independent and locally made cinema and with filmmakers holding Q&A’s when possible.

It all looks very exciting.

The podcast may be listened to here: