Location : WCML
Start date : 1st April 2011
End date : 30th June 2011
The Working Class Movement Library is hosting an exhibition marking the eightieth anniversary of the Manchester and Salford Film Society.
The Society began life as the Salford Workers' Film Society, and was an off-shoot from the local trades councils. The organisers were well connected within the working-class movement. The first secretary, Tom Cavanagh, had been a founding-member of the Communist Party, and the long-term organiser and archivist, Reg Cordwell, was a shop-steward with a strong interest in workers' education.
The first show was on 15 November 1930 at the Prince's Cinema, Liverpool Street, and included a Laurel and Hardy short and a ‘travelogue' on the River Thames. More significantly, it also presented two Russian films - The First Time in History concerned the USSR's first five-year plan, and Two Days was a drama about the conflict between Whites and Reds in southern Russia. Russian films were to feature heavily in the Society's programmes. This policy fell foul of Salford's Watch Committee, which in July 1931 refused permission for the showing of Pudovkin's classic, Storm over Asia. Billing it as ‘the film Salford must not see', the Society moved the show to Manchester, where it was largely to remain for the next 66 years.
The exhibition presents a selection of early programme notes, as well as examples of the extensive press coverage of what was dubbed ‘the storm over Salford'. It also includes examples of the praise, particularly in the Manchester Guardian, for the Society's practice of bringing ‘unusual films' to the city. Nevertheless, the Society's membership declined, so that in 1937 it had to be reconstituted, under its present name, with named financial guarantors.
The remaining pre-war years were highly successful, with a membership exceeding 1,200. The exhibition includes committee-minutes from this period, demonstrating that 75% of the members now came from south Manchester, and that the police required the Society to appoint marshals to supervise the parking of the many cars that evidently appeared before a show. The minutes also list the contemporary causes supported financially by the members, such as Manchester Hardship for Spain, Basque Refugee Children, the Manchester China Relief Fund and the Appeal for Jewish Child Victims of Persecution.
After the difficulties of the war years, the Society approached reconstruction with active support for the foundation of the North West Film Council and the continuing work of the British Federation of Film Societies. Both are reflected in the exhibition, as are some of the enterprising posters with which the Society advertised itself at this time.
Although the membership was never again to reach pre-war levels, the Society pursued a full and active programme, showing a wide range of interesting films and arranging frequent weekend-conferences. A special display in the exhibition reflects the types of films shown and the programmes presented, all of which were supported by detailed and instructive notes. Links were forged with prominent film-makers such as the campaigning documentarist, Paul Rotha, and the innovative animator, Lotte Reiniger, as the exhibition demonstrates.
When Granada TV opened in Manchester, the Society's members helped the creative staff to form their own film-society, and took part in broadcasts on the cinema. The dynamos behind all this activity were Tom and Marjorie Ainsworth. Tom, who was personally honoured for his contribution to the film-society movement as a whole, sadly died in 2007, while Marjorie is the Society's Life President.
One part of the exhibition shows how Tom, and other members, had to turn their hands to the technicalities of film projection. In the mid-1950s, declining income made it impossible to continue with professional facilities and the Society had to use 16mm films, for which it purchased its own projectors. Later, the new technologies of home video and DVDs, which could have posed a threat, in fact provided a means of projecting films to a high standard without all the difficulties of using celluloid. Tom and Marjorie, who had spent so many years ensuring that the advertised films were in fact shown, generously donated the sum necessary for the purchase of this new equipment, which has only just been replaced.
The high standard of projection has been augmented by the excellent accommodation and social facilities at the Club Theatre in Altrincham, which has been the Society's home since 1998. In 2005, the Society lodged its archive with the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which is entirely appropriate given its origins. It is this archive which has provided the majority of items in the exhibition.