Left in the Cinema: Films to Educate and Empower
TOBY BULA-EDGE is a journalism student and HIP intern
When you have something to say, “speak loud and clear”, says a paper sign blue-tacked to the wall of the Hastings Quakers Meeting House. A sign intended for the Quakers, but also applicable to the socialists who meet here on alternate Wednesdays to watch ‘socialist’ documentaries.
The screenings, under the name of Left in the Cinema, are run by local documentary filmmaker Archie Lauchlan as part of the Hastings People’s Party’s (HPP) aim to educate and engage the community.
Archie has lived in Hastings for almost 20 years and has “always been a socialist at heart”. In that time he has made two feature documentaries, one about Hastings pier, and the other #RevolutionAnyone, about what it would take to have a revolution in this country, made with his wife, Jodie.
Archie explains that the reason for making the film was “to encourage some change in this country, this dreadfully conservative, apathetic country.”
From this film they received positive feedback and “started a lot of conversations”. But that was all that was happening; just conversations. It was from a frustration with this lack of action and mere talking that HPP was born, and thus, Left in the Cinema.
Within the Party there are sub-groups, including ‘Education and training’ of which the screenings form a part. Each film screened is programmed to “reflect an area of politics, either British politics or world politics.”
Highlights have been 1974’s Hearts and Minds, dealing in a frank and uncompromising manner with the Vietnam War; An Inconvenient Truth, about climate change and released just over 20 years ago, but which could have been made now (with some adjustments to statistics); Santiago Rising, about the 2019 Chilean protests, which was followed by a Q&A with director Nick MacWilliam; and the BBC’s Berlin 1933, about the rise of fascism in German told with archival footage and diary entries.
The key to all of this is to build up the community.
This is perhaps already happening on the right, with large protests happening in London and around the UK. “If anybody’s going to have a revolution in this country, it looks like it’s going to be the right. That’s what they’re after,” claims Archie.
“The thing about populism on the right is it’s really easy. Because not only do you have all these forces already on your side, you just have this easy, almost meaningless, message of what you need to make this country ‘great again’,” he explains.
“‘Take back control of our borders’ and all this stuff is a simple message for people who are not used to questioning things, which I think we’re discouraged from doing in this country through the education system. We’re not really encouraged to question what we’re told. So, for people like that, it’s really easy and exciting that they’re going to get together with like-minded people and take back control.”
In many ways, the aims of the HPP and screenings are similar. They try to give power to the individual, and make them realise that they do have power as part of the community: “You’ve just got to understand what’s going on before you can do anything about it, but you’ve also got to understand that you do have power. As an individual you don’t have any power, but as a movement of individuals coming together, we have all the power in the world.”
The key difference being, the screening room is not frequented, at least to my knowledge, by billionaires who have their own interests at heart and the aim is not to divide and achieve this ‘myth’ of a once great country.
Instead, watching the films is a community of regulars and newcomers. Not a community aiming to ‘divide’, but one interested to learn more through documentaries.
Why documentaries though? Wouldn’t fiction films have a wider appeal?
Documentaries have always been popular as a lower budget form of filmmaking, and perhaps don’t have the appeal of grandiose fictional stories of love, deception, action, explosions and anything else that we need to escape from our realities. But they are incredible at informing people. To Archie, documentaries are “the most potent and powerful artform that exists,” and they can “change people’s minds or solidify their ideas around something”. But they will always educate: “Every time you watch a documentary, you kind of go: ‘I never knew that.’”
I didn’t know about the uprisings in Chile until I watched Santiago Rising. I didn’t know too much about the Vietnam war until I watched Hearts and Minds. I always guessed, but never knew, to what degree American health insurance companies exploited ill and suffering people to make a load of money until I watched Michael Moore’s Sicko. I had realised how we’re hurtling towards a climate disaster and not doing enough to stop it; but An Inconvenient Truth solidified that idea in my mind. These screenings have educated me. I feel a sense of community there.
Perhaps this is more talking, and not action, but in many ways, education is action. The development of a community, a strong community, is a key action. Watching a film isn’t changing the world. But they make you think, and that can change behaviour, make you more aware – a vital first step. The community feeling as well, gives hope.
And I’m perhaps starting to realise too that: “We can do whatever we want. And we will.” But, unlike the populist right, this doesn’t have to be used to promote hate.
hastingspeoplesparty.uk/why-would-you-want-to-be-left-in-the-cinema/
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