Open Cinema

  • Youthbank International's Night of Ambition

    • Posted on 14th Nov
    • Category: Blog

    Our founder Christoph Warrack flew to Northern Ireland to present on the role and meaning of ambition in social enterprise. 

    Hosted by the international youth empowerment funder Youthbank, a range of speakers brought energy and dynamism to the audience of young and hungry innovators, including through a series of creative exercises exploring practical solutions to pervasive social challenges. 

  • This Way Up 2017

    • Posted on 8th Nov
    • Category: Blog

    There isn't another gathering like This Way Up for UK cinema exhibitors. A long way from CineEurope, the UKCA conference, Cinema For All or the Distributor Slate Day, TWU met its fourth year in Hull, during the city-encompassing UK City of Culture celebrations. 

    The sector is full of good people working hard to bring great cinema to audiences of every shape, size and geography. Hosted by the incomparably genial James Mullighan (Shooting People, EIFF, Cork FF), the conference saw terrific presentations from Jenny Sealey MBE of disability champions Graeae Theatre Company on equality, Together Films' Sarah Mosses on the uses of social media technology, and a laudably frank and forthright Simran Hans of the Guardian on ethics in cinema. 

    Release windows and e-Cinema remained firmly among topics that shall not be broached. And the UK's broadband infrastructure was roundly derided as a disgrace to an advanced economy and a major impediment to the democratisation of cinema. We also got the chance to meet the team at Cinegi, with whom we're now firm friends.

    You can watch films of each of the two conference days here, and above is a picture of second-to-none exhibition ninjaMosses at work.

  • "The Social Entrepreneurs" enters production

    • Posted on 8th Oct
    • Category: Blog

    Open Cinema was approached earlier this summer to produce a film by Julienne Lam and Sallyann Tingle. Graduates of LSE's masters programme on the psychology of social entrepreneurship, the duo sought to bring to a wider audience the stories of determination and impact which characterise the social entrepreneur's journey. More on this thread to follow...

  • "Havens" screening and skills panel at Double Negative

    • Posted on 26th Sep
    • Category: Blog

    The second screening of the participatory film Havens which we produced with Macmillan participants, each with experience of cancer and mental health challenges, was in the plush surroundings of the main screening room at international visual effects studio Double Negative. 

    After a screening of D Neg's promo reel, featuring their work for movies including Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ex Machina, Havens was presented, after which a panel of skills leaders discussed routes into the film industry for those from more diverse backgrounds. 

    Speakers included D Neg VFX Producer Melinka Thompson-Godoy; Tim Hunter, head of education at BAFTA; Janey de Nordwall, director of marketing industry awards hosts British Arrows; and James Weddup from the BFI Film Fund.

  • Macmillan premiere at BFI

    • Posted on 25th Sep
    • Category: Blog

    After 12 weeks of workshops, peer mentoring and creative devising, participants on the Macmillan / Mental Health Foundation / Open Cinema filmmaking programme proudly presented their film, "Havens", to a packed Blue Room at BFI Southbank. 

    Presented as part of National Inclusion Week and with support from Access VFX, this powerful short film explored the strategies for survival and growth of those experiencing both cancer and challenges to their mental health. 

    Following the screening, participant filmmakers contributed to a Q&A also featuring representatives from Macmillan Cancer Support and the Mental Health Foundation. 

  • Beliefs Values and Worldviews at Work - RSA event

    • Posted on 14th Sep
    • Category: Blog

    Our CEO Christoph participated in a panel on Worldviews at Work as part of Ten Years After The Crash, a whole-day event at the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London. Other contributors to the day included former chancellor Ed Balls, former Downing Street communications director Alistair Campbell, and commentators Martin Wolf and Robert Peston.

    Also on the Worldviews panel, moderated by Goldsmith University's Maria Power, were Paula Vennells, CEO of the Post Office, and Asif Sadiq MBE, head of diversity and inclusiveness at EY. 

  • Video for Good at Google

    • Posted on 12th Sep
    • Category: Blog

    We were thrilled to be asked to present at the beautifully-organised Video for Good conference at Google UK HQ in London's Kings Cross. 

    Our presentation was on participatory video, and how charities can use the method to engage both supported people and staff in a creative process exploring issues of shared importance. 

    While at Google we were given a tour of their YouTube studios, where were impressed to find diverse local students and community members making free use of their world-class media facilities. 

    You can view the slides from the presentation here.  

  • We join Access VFX!

    • Posted on 10th Aug
    • Category: Blog

    In the lead-up to our presentation of the Macmillan / Mental Health Foundation film at the BFI in National Inclusion Week 2018, we joined the working group of Access VFX, a grouping of world-leading visual effects and animation studios seeking to make their recruitment practices as inclusive and reflective of diversity as possible. As one Oscar-winning employer remarked, "the more diversity, the more talent". More on this thread to follow...

  • This is Liverpool film launches

    • Posted on 2nd Aug
    • Category: Blog

    This month our filmmaker Paul James Furlong completed work for Power to Change on This is Liverpool, a film exploring the remarkable stories of community business success in the city. 

    These are stories of community groups who have not stood by while urban decay progresses where state and private business have failed, but taken ownership and management into their own and their communities' hands. Organisations covered included Granby Four Streets, The Baltic Triangle, Homebaked, The Florrie and Alt Valley Trust. 

    You can read a blog here on the topic by Mark Gordon, Communications Director at Power to Change, the national lottery fund for community business, for whom Open Cinema has been producing a series of impact and advocacy films. The completed film can be watched here.

  • Machine, Platform, Crowd talk at The RSA

    • Posted on 11th Jul
    • Category: Blog

    Representing Open Cinema International, the foundation's technology company, our CEO Christoph was in the audience of a talk at The RSA in London by MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson. 

    The focus was his new book, Machine, Platform, Crowd, co-authored with Andrew McAfee, about the history, current state and future potential of technology for individuals and communities. The binaries the book presents are between Mind and Machine, Product and Platform, Individual and Crowd, and it suggests a balance between each each is vital amid a general shift from former to latter in each category.

    In the Q&A, Christoph asked the author if a tendency towards monopoly in technology economies was innate, and whether instead a gearing towards inclusive economy could be sought. Brynjolffson did not, in Christoph's view, provide a satisfactory answer, suggesting that societies were the net winners even from tech monopolism. 

    An extract from the talk can be seen here.

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