It can be said that Brighton is a hub for cinema. There are a wide variety of cinemas in the area, ranging from multiplexes to independents, with someone to offer for anyone somewhat interested in film. But what if cinemas don’t offer a specific niche that you happen to be craving? That is where film clubs come into play.
Brighton itself has a few film clubs to go around, ranging a variety of genres and niches. One of these clubs is the Toad Lickers Collective (TLC), although it is not strictly a film club. Founded last year by Keziah Keeler and Liz Rose, TLC’s wider programme includes free exhibitions and workshops alongside film screenings once a month at the Rose Hill, an independent music venue.
Regarding why they wanted to do more than just film screenings, Kez said, “There’s a lot of things you can express through film that can reach a wider audience, and we’re quite interested in the idea of film as the eye of the workers. We thought it was a cool way to get a lot of people in a room talking about the same subject which feels a bit missing in this era.”
TLC themselves don’t make much of a profit, due to being a Community Interest Company, so any profit made from screenings goes towards running free workshops and exhibitions, due to their desire to make themselves as accessible as possible.
The choice of The Rose Hill as their venue for film screenings was one that TLC are happy with, as Rose points out the difficulty of finding places to host events. Rose said, “The Rose Hill are really welcoming and really care about the community, and I think you feel that in the atmosphere they create, it’s all very casual and we really like how comfortable it is as well, it’s cosy and intimate.”
TLC’s most recent exhibition was Folklore, which set out to explore why folklore is having a revival and how contemporary artists are using its legends, techniques and aesthetics to describe their experiences. This fits in with what Kez describes as the core of the club, “this idea that storytelling is really important, and there are all these different ways of storytelling that we can use the rules and the methods to help us describe social issues and real problems.”
Whilst they’ll be looking at other interests when their film screenings return after the summer in September, Liz wishes to explore working class culture in a potential future film season, looking at joyful working-class films such as Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. Their reasoning is because, to them, “Folklore has a history that belongs to people and has the potential to be much more linked to working class cultures. As funding disappears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to see diverse voices, and if you’re working class or from an underrepresented background, those stories don’t get told in a genuine way by people telling them.”
Similarly to TLC’s recent folk-based exhibition, Bom-Bane’s Folk Horror Film and Ice Cream Club may be of interest as well, a film club that explores the many films belonging to the folk horror genre. Hosted by David Bramwell at Bom-Bane’s in Kemptown, each film screening features an intermission, a discussion halfway through the screening, a food break, and what David describes as ‘an avant-garde unsettling performance from a group calling themselves the Bewilderkin’
David himself is no stranger to folk horror, having been performing a Wicker-Man singalong for 16 years. To him, the club is a chance for him to ‘explore the genre and see how far we can stretch the boundaries of the definition of folk horror, and not present the obvious choices like The Wicker Man. We try and delve into weirder fringes of Folk Horror, including folk horror films from around the world, not just Anglo-centric, and presenting films from parts of the world that wouldn’t necessarily be associated with the genre.’
The difficulty of running any film club largely revolves around the financial aspects. Despite most screenings at Bom-Banes selling out tickets-wise, thanks in part to the venue capacity being just 25, David notes there is difficulty in spreading the word about his folk horror film club. He said, ‘It’s too expensive to put posters up around town, and I’d be making a loss on the night if I paid for 50 posters to go up for a week or two.’
Regardless of the financial aspect of keeping the film club going, David is still optimistic for the club’s future. Whilst there is no showing at Bom-Bane’s in May due to David’s work during Brighton Fringe, his next screening will be the film ‘Wake in Fright’ from 1971. As David describes it, ‘It’s one of Nick Cave’s favourite films, it’s similarly themed to ‘Straw Dogs’, about the breakdown of civilisation in remote places and about the schoolteacher through unfortunate circumstances finds himself trapped in this town and how he descends into this toxic-machismo culture.’
While these two clubs are just two examples of film clubs across Brighton, there are undoubtedly more than these two, and if your interest is not in folk horror or folk in general, there will likely be other film clubs that will satisfy any cravings for film clubs of a certain genre.
The Whistler 