Planning Meeting

We closed  our last season with the AGM, and as we held it before the screening everyone kept it pretty short.  The good news is that we are still solvent, but the bad news is that we have been dependent on external grants to purchase the big ticket items like projector and sound system, and in the current age of austerity I do not think that the local auythority will look kindly on a grant application to upgrade/replace the kit. 

We made money on most of our Thursday screenings, but for many of our Sunday screeenings the audience was solely committee members and family members.  The other major source of revenue is the bar, and it is clear that our audience is generally thirsty.  I was only half-joking when I suggested that we sould set ourselves up as a Wine Club that also screens films.

It's difficult to coerce people into attending, but we intend to harness the power of the internet to send out reminders to members - or at least to those of  our members have email access - and also intend to run a raffle for our "free" introductory film.  We agreed to have DVDs as prices and I volunteered to find something appropriate for the good folk of Highclere: after a quick trawl through Amazon I bought a box set of Billy Wilder films (including Some Like It Hot - which I saw many years ago on the big screen at the PPP while at Oxford) and another set starring Orson Welles (including The Third Man).

My plan is to blog for the full season and to intersperse updates on our progress with the notes that I prepare for each screening.  Hopefully our choice of Up In The Air will get the season off  to a good start.

Forthcoming Attractions

As the end of August approaches and the evenings draw in, it will soon be time for the Film Club to launch its 2010-2011 season.

Once again we've followed the strategy of starting the season with a "big" film that was both a commercial and critical success - in this case Up In The Air - and we'll be following this with regular screenings through to the end of April.  For our Thursday screenings we've chosen a selection  of (hopefully) popular films that will bring in a good audience, as we need to sell tickets to keep the Club solvent, and on Sundays we'll be screening an idiosyncratic mix of independent and foreign language films.

The full programme is as follows:

Thursday Screenings

• An Education
• A Single Man
• The Hurt Locker
• Gran Turino
• A Serious Man
• The Road
• Public Enemies
• The Wrestler
• The Sound of Music (honest!)

Sunday Screenings

• Waltz With Bashir
• 30 Days of Night
• Broken Embraces
• Inglourious Basterds
• The Hangover
• 35 Shots of Rum
• Home
• Moon
• Me and Oson Welles
• Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis

I must admit to not having seen any of these, so I'm looking forward to an enjoyable, interesting and - hopefully - profitable season.