Community Building. Nice to say. Hard to do.
4-mins read time
Entry Sign at Walthamstow Trades Hall.
Suppose you want to know one thing about film distribution: it's hard. It always has been, but since the pandemic (STP), it's become tougher. Some cinemas, not all, are still struggling to attract audiences, and audiences themselves have changed. This is especially true for certain kinds of films, such as those mid-level, tougher arthouse dramas, which find it more challenging to reach the audience via traditional cinema channels. So, to add to the lexicon of audience development, Mustard Studio works on community-building projects.
One film we’ve been working on for Modern Films was GREEN BORDER. A ‘punch to the solar plexus’ is how the Guardian’s 4-star review described it. A film that shows the refugee crisis in modern-day Europe, where people are used as political pawns as they struggle to get to their end destination. Part of that distribution approach was taking the film to non-traditional spaces, maybe a multiplex cinema rather than an independent venue, church, or community group.
As one half of Mustard, this is how I found myself organising a screening at the Trades Hall in my local borough in London. Now, the Trades Hall is a pretty unique and awesome venue. Some of the events in September alone included Wanita, female DJs on vinyl, Poems Not Bombs Group, and Stoned on Love ‘the 1st third-wave indie and rock and roll club’. They have an eclectic events schedule and are plugged into the local community. It's a great place to host a screening, and they thought so, offering their venue for free because, alongside all the events, you’ll see posters dotted around the bar with a ‘refugees welcome’ slogan.
Venue - check.
Venues are not always the challenge. Its audiences.
Flyer for screening and questions menu for post-screening chat
We’ve done plenty of GREEN BORDER screenings across the country, and mobilising an audience to see a film they know from the outset will probably be bleak sets a challenge. Does this mean films like this shouldn’t get distribution beyond festival outings? How do you support films culturally? Support from the BFI Audiences Fund and the Polish Film Institute made community screenings possible for this film.
They can only work if you have a network on the ground. For Walthamstow, that included local hero Liza Fletcher, who runs the Walthamstow International Film Festival and creates networking events for local creatives and who knows everyone. Also, Stow Film Lounge programming curatorially innovative films across the borough and beyond and who oversaw the set-up for the night, bringing in a screen and leading a faultless technical experience. Liza introduced me to a local charity, Stories and Supper, which is committed to changing the narrative about migration and people could donate money to them on the night. This core group creates a network; messages are exchanged, emails are sent, and articles are published. All of these require a set of assets that may differ from the original release assets; more curated, targeted, and specific.
When part of your strategy is ‘community building’, do not mistake it for one newsletter or e-blast. It's detailed and more time-consuming. We’ve worked on media campaigns where the designer makes the ad, the media buyer books it, and then you lift a finger to send the email to supply it (sometimes you can even cut out the finger and get the designer to supply it directly); so all the activity that surrounds grassroots is deep and layered.
Which brings me to my final point. The flyering. Flyering in my local community. I’m up for that, I thought, with a nonchalant shrug despite the fact that the last time I did it was probably around 1990. I’m no rookie, though; I had my blu-tak and my pins but not, as it turns out, sellotape, which was also required. On the day, I did need an umbrella, which I wouldn’t recommend.
There aren’t quite as many shops willing to put something on display as you think, especially if they think it might be controversial (the film attracted a lot of attention in Poland, for example), so I ended up walking up and down streets looking for cafes and shops that already took flyers. A big shout out to Charlie at the library, who put the flyer on the notice board in the town square. One shop owner scrutinised the flyer and looked at me ‘I’m not a refugee’, he said as he walked over to his corkboard, ‘but anything that brings us together is good’, which made me feel a little bit warm inside, despite the fact I was mostly wet.
Despite it feeling like a lot of work to deliver a screening locally, without the usual cinema infrastructure, working within your community and meeting people who want to support the film because of the subject matter and because they want to make a difference is why many people like me got into the industry in the first place. It reminds you of your first love when you go to the cinema and see a film and want to tell everyone about it. It's rewarding, and it's meaningful. At the time of writing, we had 83 sign-ups and a final head count of around 75, which is pretty good, and local press pieces, including a wider one about the power of community of film.
Pre-screening Buzz.
If you want to know more about how people reacted and how to strategise for community building, then drop us a line at info@mustardstudio.co.uk
