This screening is part of our SCREENTIME programme.
SCREENTIME is a new initiative inviting young people aged 18 – 30 to gain first hand experience in programming cinema and producing screenings for an audience. In autumn 2021, the group of young programmers attended workshops ran by Cinema Nation CIC – a queer-led Merseyside based research and innovation Community Interest Company that explores, supports, champions and encourages all forms of film exhibition. The Programmers were introduced to key concepts of exhibition, licensing, marketing and audience development.
Through this process, the young programmers have curated a series of 5 screenings that centre around the joy and challenges of community gathering and collective identities, and referencing the communal experience of lockdown. The slate celebrates the joy of music as a way to connect with others and will be screened at local music venue The Radio Rooms.
Our 2021-22 cohort of Berwick Young Programmers is Chloe Charlton, George Cochrane, Camille Relet and Ilinca Vanau who will be joining us at the screenings to introduce the work.
Sing Street
It is 1985, and as part of his struggling family’s efforts to economise, fifteen-year-old Dubliner Conor Lawlor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is taken out of private school and put in a rough, strict Christian Brothers school called Synge Street. Though relentlessly bullied, Conor quickly finds his crowd here, forming a band to impress the mysterious older girl (Lucy Boynton) across the road. It works, though as Conor gets closer to ‘Raphina’ and the band gets better and better, things at home continue to deteriorate, his parents threatening to split up. Music becomes Conor’s only means of escape.