While the current season of films to be shown by the Manchester and Salford Film Society has been postponed due to the coronavirus crisis, the UK's oldest film society is still celebrating ninety years of continuous activity, with Salford's Working Class Movement Library holding online events.
The Library is currently digitally sharing some of the historic Film Society documents it holds, as well as holding an online event on 16th December where attendees link together to discuss the 1929 experimental Soviet film Man With A Movie Camera.*
The Society was set up by the local trades councils as the Salford Workers' Film Society in 1930, showing mostly Russian films at the Prince's Cinema, Liverpool Street. Less than a year later, Salford's Watch Committee refused to allow a showing of Pudovkin's classic, Storm Over Asia, so the Society moved to Manchester, where the film was allowed, changing its name in the process.
In 2005, the Society's archives were lodged with the Library, which include annual prospectuses, programmes and other documents providing a fascinating insight into the workings of a unique organisation. Some of these docs have now been digitised and, from tomorrow Sunday 15th November - the official 90th anniversary - will be available to browse through on the Library's Instagram account.
Then on Wednesday 16th December at 7.30pm, Andy Willis, Professor of Film Studies from the University of Salford, will facilitate a discussion on Dziga Vertov's avant garde silent documentary Man With A Movie Camera, often voted amongst the best ever made, with one critic calling it 'an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be'.
The film was first screened by what was then the Manchester and Salford Workers' Film Society on 24th October 1931, with Ewan MacColl in attendance along with many others...
"The opportunity of seeing films of such stature compensated for some of the deprivation experienced by an ill-educated adolescent who faced the bleak prospect of trying to earn a living in the arid desert of 1930", Ewan MacColl wrote in his autobiography, Journeyman.
Attendees will be encouraged to watch the film on YouTube in the week running up to the event (with accompanying notes provided by the Film Society), and then join up live with others on the evening of 16th December to discuss what they have seen...
* To view the film on YouTube – click here
For more details see the Working Class movement Library Facebook event page and website – a link to the discussion will be provided on the 16th December
For more details on the Salford and Manchester Film Society see the website – click here
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