It may astonish you to learn that your bloggist has never been invited to a film première, never walked the red carpet in his dinner jacket and black tie. One side effect of this is that I had never sat in a cinema alongside those actually appearing on the screen. Until, yesterday that is.
As part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture I attended a screening of 'A Bunch of Amateurs', the 2022 documentary about the travails of the Bradford Movie Makers club, going since 1932, but possibly not going for much longer. I hadn't managed to see it when it first came out and was happy to take the opportunity to catch up with the film and the promised director's Q&A. It's a lovely film, both joyous and moving, full of pathos and comedy in equal measure. One implicit subtextual message - which may or may not be relevant to this blog's readership - concerned the mutual support and companionship available to men of a certain age from sharing in a common hobby.
Watching it, however, turned out to be an odd experience. The Q&A was actually not just with the director, but also with the club members featured in the film, all of whom took their place in the auditorium. There is a scene early on in the film in which club members sit and watch the opening of 'Oklahoma', and sing along to 'Oh What a Beautiful World'; it eventually transpires that there is a rather poignant reason why they are doing that. So I sat there, flanked by people watching themselves in a film watching a film, whilst they sang along to themselves singing along to Curly McLain. Surreal.
Here is some Nice Jam:
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