Nottingham's Emma Carys gives her take on the state of the screen industry, and what we can do to keep it a diverse, interesting place...
Storytelling is our most innate human characteristic. From cave drawings, dating as far back as 36,000 years ago, to our religious texts and Jacqueline Wilson novels, we have always felt this impulse to interpret the world around us and communicate our findings, in an act of giving meaning to this craziness we call life.
Cinema is a descendent of storytelling, and in an ever-growing world of digital commodities, and the looming threat of the metaverse - which many fear will warp our sense of reality - cinema has managed to land itself in a very powerful position, for while it is a member of the digital world, it is more concerned with this universe than the modern alternative.
When you experience ‘good cinema’ – which, of course, is highly subjective, based solely on audience experience – it can inspire you to be a better person and to make positive changes in your life. UCL’s Department of Experimental Psychology found that going to the cinema has an abundance of positive effects - including improved brain function, memory, focus and productivity. It can also create a sense of interconnectivity. “Despite the fact that these people are all strangers to one another, their hearts [began] to beat in synchrony while watching the film,” UCL claims, finding that audiences reported feeling closer to their fellow moviegoers after screenings, giving evidence of a growing emotional bond from the experience.
The rise of streaming services has caused a plummet in funding for independent films and meaningful cinema
But how can all this save the world?
If we’re able to promote this sense of one collective identity on a larger scale, we can then connect generations and cultures together and shift the idea of ‘oneness of self’, to ‘oneness of people’. A worldwide extensive sense of empathy would have a powerful effect on our approach to politics, the climate crisis and, much like the feelings of oneness discovered in the hippie movement, war. But this must start at a local level for there to be a sense of authenticity and truth.
Within the last decade, Hollywood has quite rightly been criticised for a lack of diversity in its casting, however we must also focus on its lack of diversity in the type of stories that are being told. While Save the Cat! author Blake Snyder argues that every story is in fact the same, only with different characters and environments, I believe there is still profound reasoning for a variety of diverse people (who could very easily be found in Nottingham) to be given the opportunity to tell their own narrative.
An incredible example of this can be seen through Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Academy Award-winning A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which follows the story of Saba, a miraculous survivor of an honour killing in Pakistan, and her bravery in wanting to take her father and uncle to court. Forced to forgive those who attempted to kill her to enable their release from prison, the law did not liberate her, however this film did. It made headline news, and in October 2016 no man could legally be “forgiven” out of prosecution for a murder (or attempted murder) they committed. What a result! The filmmakers went on to build a mobile cinema, in which they drove into the heartlands of the country in an act of spreading awareness to communities and introducing films that would “open up their minds to competing worldviews”. But that wasn’t easy.
Real change is created by local communities and filmmaking gives us this opportunity to tell our own stories and listen to the voices of others
The rise of streaming services has caused a plummet in funding for independent films and meaningful cinema. As Matt Damon explains in his episode of Hot Ones, “The DVD was a huge part of our business revenue stream, and technology has made that obsolete… when that [physical media] went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make,” because box office revenues have needed to quadruple for a film to break even, making mid-budget releases a “massive gamble in a way that it wasn’t in the 1990s when they were making those kind of movies” – in an era void of streaming.
But how can we put this wrong right? Does the responsibility lie within production companies to start to make conscious, ethical decisions on the filmmakers they support, even with the current financial implications, or is it a matter of relying on us the consumers to make an active effort to go to independent movie theatres and watch films that teach us something about others? How do we promote cinema as this culturally-binding art form, capable of mass social change, and make it become a mainstream entity, where production companies no longer see it as a huge risk to their capital?
Real change is created by local communities and filmmaking gives us this opportunity to tell our own stories and listen to the voices of others. With our own Vicky McClure creating Build Your Own production company focused on getting Nottingham on the map and all the talent that has made its way from The Television Workshop onto our screens, I am optimistic that Nottingham’s projections for Hollywood are bright. So, make sure you’re getting down to one of our independent cinemas, getting involved and getting our voices heard.
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