New Family Film Club For Guildford

Published on: 6 Mar, 2019
Updated on: 6 Mar, 2019

By Jan Todd

A nine-year-old is hoping to set up a Family Film Club in Guildford, with the help of his dad, Ian.

Rufus Cartwright has designed the poster, above, to advertise the venture.

Ian and Rufus Cartwright.

The first film to be shown will be the animated film Howl’s Moving Castle at 3.30pm on Saturday, March 16, at the Odeon cinema in Guildford. Tickets, costing £11.75 are available from https://www.ourscreen.com/screening/48024.

The film is loosely based on the 1986 novel of the same name by British author Diana Wynne Jones.

The story is set in a fictional kingdom where both magic and early 20th-century technology are prevalent, against the backdrop of a war with another kingdom. The film tells the story of a young hatter named Sophie after she is turned into an old woman by a witch’s curse. Her only chance of breaking the spell lies with a young wizard named Howl and his companions in his walking castle.

The film is made by Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation film studio based in Tokyo and best known for its anime feature films. Five of Studio Ghibli’s films have received Academy Award nominations and their 2001 film Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003. Studio Ghibli has been called ‘Japan’s answer to Disney’. “Some say they’re even better!”, says Ian.

The Odeon cinema in Guildford.

If the screening is a success and there is interest in the idea of a Guildford Family Film Club, the Cartwrights hope they might develop a community and social element to the Club. Post-film litter-picking along the river, rounded off with a bite to eat, is just one idea.

Rufus and Ian hope that the Family Film Club will become a regular event, with as many families as possible getting together. To help, they’ve created a Facebook page to get everyone in one place for future screenings – https://www.facebook.com/guildfordfamilyfilmclub/.

The screening at the Odeon has been made possible thanks to ‘ourscreen’, a website (co-founded by Ian Cartwright) that lets people set up screenings in their local cinema, and which inspired Rufus to set up a Family Film Club.

Launched in 2014, ‘ourscreen’ is a crowd-sourced cinema platform which allows members of the public to host their own film screenings at their local cinema, where the sale of a certain number of tickets allows the screening to go ahead. The site has access to over 150 UK cinemas and a rotating choice of over 600 films, providing an opportunity for film clubs to develop. Two of ‘ourscreen’s’ most successful hosts have developed popular film clubs in Manchester and Barnstaple, both hosting screenings of classic films each month.

For more information about ‘ourscreen’, visit https://www.ourscreen.com/.