One of Manchester most well known and loved arts venues, Cornerhouse is set to go HOME this spring. Merging with the Library Theatre Company into one building, you’ll be able to see original new work in contemporary visual art, theatre and film under one roof.

HOME exterior © Mecanoo

HOME exterior, February 2015

Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo, HOME houses five cinema spaces, two theatre spaces, 500m2 gallery space, three café spaces, a contemporary function room, a bookshop and an outdoor terrace.

Douglas Coupland, installation view of Slogans for the 21st Century 2011-14 in Douglas Coupland’s everywhere is anywhere is everything, Vancouver Art Gallery 2014. Photo by Rachel Topham

For the first in a year of visual art exhibitions, projects and publications exploring the theme of Transactions of Desire, HOME presents The heart is deceitful above all things which is a group exhibition on display from 22 May – 26 July. See new work from artists including Jeremy Bailey, Declan Clarke, Basim Magdy (commission produced by Art in General in collaboration with HOME) and Jessey Tsang alongside existing work from Douglas Coupland, Irina Gheorghe and Wu Tsang amongst others.

The Funfair, credit Graeme Cooper

If theatre’s more your thing, there are three HOME theatre productions to look forward to including the world première of The Funfair, a new adaptation by Simon Stephens which sets the break-up of a youthful romance against the dizzying backdrop of the funfair, The Oresteia, directed by Blanche McIntyre – a radically stripped back version of Aeschylus’ masterpiece, and HOME’s Christmas production Inkheart, the UK première of a new stage adaptation of the bestselling novel by Cornelia Funke, directed by Walter Meierjohann.

HOME interior cinema space, February 2015

The cinema space will play host to a Music and Film season to include archive and experimental footage accompanied by soundtracks from Manchester’s most innovative musical talent. The first of which will be Lonesome directed by Pál Fejös with a live score by neo-classical composer Robin Richards accompanied by musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music on 24 May.

Also in the cinema will be this year’s ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival fiesta. The annual festival presents new filmmaking from Spain and Latin America and includes New Mexican Cinema, a four-day celebration of the best in film from Mexico.

HOME is situated at the First Street Development, just off Whitworth Street West and very close to Oxford Road and Castlefield, Manchester. For a full programme of events and exhibitions at HOME, please visit here.

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Max Hattler & blackboard scribbles which pertain to the ‘Max Hattler Canal Commission’, a water screen projection which is premiering at KXFS in London on 6 September. Photo: Lucy Pawlak.

I mainly live in London but don’t have a studio there. I travel a fair bit with my work, and I’m laptop-based, so I can work anywhere. I like putting myself in new environments and taking inspiration from them. Currently, I am doing an artist residency with Pixel Palace at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle. Big Newcastle daily The Journal wrote an article about me and my two fellow residents, Lucy Pawlak and GH Hovagimyan last week which you can read here.

While in Newcastle I’ve been working on several projects, including Model Starship which I shot in my temporary flat in the iconic Byker Wall council estate … Another new work is Catch, the official music video for the single of the same name by The Egg, from their brand new album Something To Do. You can view Catch online here.

The main project here at Pixel Palace, an investigation of scanlines and moiree, is still a little top secret.

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I grew up glued to the TV, particularly American cartoons funded by toy manufacturers to flog their products, and playing a lot of video games that didn’t do me any harm. However, cinema was, and will always be, my first love.

Our local cinema was the mythical ABC Muirend Cinema. Designed by William Bereseford Inglis in 1933, the building exterior replicated a Spanish style hacienda while inside the auditorium had lots of Flamenco style motifs, such as balconies, amber lanterns and images of matadors painted on tiles dotted along the stairwells. Looking back as I write this, Muirend Cinema seems a bizarre prophecy of my future; I studied Spanish at Glasgow University and somehow I’ve ended up working for Glasgow Film Theatre as Learning Projects Coordinator for Young People. The range of the films it offered were the standard box office fare but I relished them all regardless. My seminal movie moments included watching Jurassic Park on the opening weekend, my mum convincing the box office grump that I was old enough to watch The Man Without A Face and stuffing my face with the cheaper sweets bought next door in Safeways to the bombast of Independence Day.

Sadly like a lot of old cinemas in Glasgow, ABC Muirend shut down in 2001 due to shrinking audiences that preferred the industrial comfort of a multiplex and the cost of maintaining a building that was well past its prime. Each time I pass it, I can’t help feel a wave of sadness for an important community relic that now functions as luxury apartments for a select few. My memories of Muirend remain but families in the Southside of Glasgow have to travel elsewhere these days for their cinematic outings.

Hopefully some of these families come to the GFT for our free Take 2 family screenings which screen every Saturday morning. I try to programme a range of films that appeal to a wide audience while sneaking in a few classic and foreign gems, like The Boy From Mercury, Mr Hulot’s Holiday and The Belles of St. Trinian’s. Unfortunately a lack of distribution of foreign titles for children and availability of prints makes screening non-Hollywood films a lot harder than it should be.

Although 41% of 15-24 year olds visit the cinema once a month* and are exposed to moving images on a daily basis, young people are often the least catered to by art house cinemas. More often than not, they tend to select films that appeal to older audiences with their youth remit left solely to ‘parent and baby’ screenings. Consequently, children and young adults miss out on the wealth of different contemporary perspectives offered by world cinema and so remain quite happy to settle for whatever is showing at their local Cineworld.

This isn’t helped by the fact that moving image education still struggles to be implemented across schools in the UK. Despite repeated efforts, teachers cite a lack of resources and adequate training to properly implement film into the classroom. As a result, DVDs can often become a babysitter for pupils rather than a key part of their cultural development and awareness. It remains to be seen whether the ambitions of 21st Century Literacy, a consortium set up by the UK Film Council and Film Education among others, can be achieved.

In response to these issues, GFT Learning set up the Glasgow Youth Film Festival to offer young people a chance to help devise, promote and run their own film festival. Programmed by a worryingly cool bunch of teenagers, GYFF aims to reach out to young Glaswegians through their love of movies while supporting their talents and aspirations. This year almost 7,000 young people attended GYFF events; it was such a refreshing sight to see so many young faces in our cinemas. (Previously, members of our Youth Group told me that they felt unwelcome by older GFT patrons who thought they’d only talk throughout the film.) The response we had was overwhelming and encouraging enough to safely say that there’s a youth audience in Glasgow interested in films from around the globe.

Over the next few years for GYFF, I hope to increase the opportunities for young people to talk to people who work in the moving image industries – not just directors or actors but writers, graphic designers, animators and editors who all make a living from their passion for film, TV and video games. Like the rest of the arts, the film industry remains horribly white and middle class, in spite of the occasional tokenistic scheme for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Anyone who aspires to work in this industry is expected to intern for free or live off small bursaries. I had to do this for almost 2 years and I doubt that it will change anytime soon, no matter how legally grey internships appear.

There’s more to young movie fans than a lucrative demographic to market blockbusters to. Exhibitors, distributors, not to mention teachers, should encourage young people to look at moving image in a reflective and creative way rather than be passive observers that we often assume them to be. Thankfully youth film festivals such as GYFF, Discovery and Future Film, alongside the exciting developments promised by 8 1/2 Foundation, demonstrate the growing commitment to future generations of cinemagoers. With the falling costs of HD technology and the increasing ease of distributing films online, I’m hopeful that all young people will continue to be inspired by the flickering images around them – from the glow of a TV, the hum of a projector or even the hypnotic whirl of your mum’s dirty washing.

*According to UK Film Council’s 2009 Statistics Handbook

Images of ABC Muirend taken from Scottish Cinemas site

It’s a very Mancunian outcome to that tale don’t you think?  Morrisey could have had a few b-sides from that one I reckon.

Whilst the technology in our living room and within our computers continue to shape the way we engage with narrative moving image in our homes, we are still drawn to the warming familiar glow of the cinema screen.  We consider going to the cinema a communal experience.  Although we may be absorbed within the narrative, we become aware of our fellow audience members through our laughter, jumping from our seats in unison, or from shared irritation at the chatty couple in row G.
There are other moments in cinema – not the jumps, not the laughs. Nor the epic establishing shots, or the final twist or unveiling – but moments in which an idea, an emotion, an event will be rendered so perfectly that it will extend and blossom outwith of its parent film.  With no audible clues – no gasps, giggles or snivels – we ride out these moments within ourselves, unaware of their effect upon those around us.  The opportunity to mull over these nugget like moments can often be lost in our discussion of the broader film on the journey home, particularly if the film disapointed.

So, at the end of this short, rambling post (I’m sorry but I find it far easier to express myself through film or animation) I have posted just a couple of movie moments that continue to transfix and inspire me in my own practice.  I do so in the sincere hope that you may wish to share some of your own favourite moments by posting in the comments thread.

For better or worse we are exposed to moving image from an early age and unconsciously we begin to learn some of the rules that govern its creation and presentation.
I have sometimes been fortunate enough to be asked to teach practical and critical moving image techniques to children.  To help the young people into a creative frame of mind I will often show them the opening sequences of a number of films.  As I often use films that are several decades old the students normal reaction is to moan and gripe that they are going to have to sit through 10 minutes without a hint of CGI.  Sometimes I’ll offend the class even further by introducing a foreign language with the subtitles turned off.  My mainstays are “Bad Day at Black Rock”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Night of the Hunter”, and for a foreign film I will normally use “The Devil’s Backbone” a great example of the classic ghost story beautifully executed.
Using “Bad Day at Black Rock” as an example:
A train cuts through a western landscape to an overblown soundtrack.
The title appears in enormous letters across the cinemascope screen.
Me:         ”What’s going to happen in this film?”
Pupils:     “Well how do we know?  Nothing has happened yet?”
Me:         “Listen to the music.”
Pupils:     “Something bad is going to happen.”
“The train is out of control.”
“The train is bringing something or someone to Black Rock.”
Me:         ”Who do you think is on the train?”
Pupils:     “A murderer.”
“A bounty hunter.”
“A prisoner on the run.”
The train pulls into a dying desert town with a smattering of residents amongst the few houses.  The train hasn’t stopped here for many years.  A one armed man (an aged Spencer Tracy) disembarks and is immediately greeted with great suspicion from the locals he encounters.

Me:        “Who is the man and why are the towns people so distrustful of him?”
Pupils:    “He has a score to settle.”
“He’s the new Sheriff.”
“No. He’s just an old, one armed guy – what harm can he do to them?”
“He or the townspeople are hiding a secret.”
… and so on, until I turn it off to ask some more questions about the direction that the film might take and the choices the filmmaker made in establishing the mood.
I am not hailing “Bad Day at Black Rock” as the greatest film, but it and many other films are great ways of encouraging young people to develop an understanding of moving image literacy.
Whichever film I use the kids usually implore me to let them continue watching – not to escape having to do any work (motivating young people to take an active part in a class about film and filmmaking is thankfully not a concern), but from a genuine desire to see what happens next, to look around the corner, to walk to the next hill, to see what lies beyond.
On their own, channel flicking at home, chances are they would have continued past an old or foreign film.  Being able to share the experience with their classmates and encouraged to analyze the filmmakers’ choices they become invested in the story.  Connected to the one armed man, to Scout and Jem Finch, to the brother and sister fleeing Robert Mitchum, even to Santi the wronged boy haunting the orphanage in Del Toro’s tale.
To my great satisfaction and without fail, 5 or 6 of the kids (or their parents) will ask for details of the DVD so they can watch the film at home and share it amongst their classmates.  The communal experience of watching and discussing a short piece of cinema brings a class of disparate kids together.

And so, in the spirit of sharing, here’s just a couple of scenes that have captivated me over the years.
Have a peek at them and perhaps even seek out the originals, but be sure to post examples of cinematic moments that have connected with you in some way.  Be honest, this isn’t like spreading out all those novels by french authors around your bedroom to try and impress someone, but it is perhaps best to share clips from lesser known works.
Keep sharing and look out for one another’s footprints in the snow when you exit the theatre.

In the Soup – 1992 – Alexandre Rockwell
the Break-in scene
Self conscious screenwriter Aldolfo (Steve Buscemi) has written an unfilmable 500-page screenplay and is looking for a producer.  In steps Aldolfo’s “guardian angel”, Joe (Seymour Cassel at his best) a fast-talking shyster who promises to produce the film but has his own unique ideas regarding film financing.  In this scene Aldolfo finds himself unwittingly taking part in a break-in and the stage is set for an unexpected and heartbreaking confrontation with the elderly home owner.

The scene is established from about 2mins 20secs

Dreams – 1990 – Akira Kurasawa
the Fox Procession scene
A small boy witnesses the slow wedding procession of a fox, a sacred ceremony not meant for the eyes of man.

Night of the Hunter – 1955 – Charles Laughton
the River Boat scene.
Okay, forgive me for this far more well known clip, I’m sure many of you know and love this classic scene.
Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a serial killer and self-appointed preacher, relentlessly pursues the children of his dead cell mate in order to uncover a cache of stolen money.

Links:

My website.
http://www.fortsunlight.co.uk

The Art of the Title Sequence
http://www.artofthetitle.com/

Scottish Screen’s moving image education website – a great resource for parents and teachers.
http://www.movingimageeducation.org/