The Film Going Landscape

Mark Cosgrove. Head of Programme 2007

I just got the Film Listings from the very first Venue. What an exotic place Bristol sounds on the film front, what with Studio 567 (is this New York?) and the Europa ADJ Holiday Inn (the French riviera surely!). And what is this Concorde on Stapleton Road with its - now rather quaint - line in porn: Danish Dentist on the Job, indeed (wonder if that is pre-dogma Lars Von Trier?). Of the 8 cinemas listed only the Odeon is recognisable today by name. Into this small mix was to be launched the UK's first media centre flying the flag for world cinema. The rise of the multiplex through the late 1980s changed the face of film exhibition. The upside: they grew the audience for film. The downside: they pushed out the small operator. When I arrived at Watershed in the mid 1990s I was greeted with a handshake and the comment that I wouldn’t be needed for very long (is this Bristol humour? I hoped!).

So 25 years later we have 4 major chains with between them 50 odd screens but we also have a thriving independent cinema culture in the city. I often say to people in my travels that Bristol has the best film culture outside of London (ed: strike that - London's film culture is diminishing as I write!) With the subterranean interventions of the Cube, the choice programming of the Orpheus, the Harbourside presence of Arnolfini and Watershed, the rise of silent cinema, the ever growing strength of short film, of animation, the growing international status of the Encounters and Wildscreen festivals - film in all its variety and as a communal activity is very much in rude health in Bristol.

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