Southern snobbery can't take the shine off Bradford's pride
Standing clutching a giant white R, I chatted to Oscar-winner Simon Beaufoy as he balanced his Academy Award atop a giant white B.
Next to me stood Steve Abbott, the producer of A Fish Called Wanda and Brassed Off. He was partly obscured by a giant white A.
Together the three of us made up the first three letters of BRADFORD as the city celebrated the decision by UNESCO to make the former textile capital the world's first City of Film. It was a tremendous feeling: standing there, surrounded by smiling faces, everyone buoyed up by the mood of optimism and transformation that greeted one of the most positive news stories to come out of Bradford in decades.
But after the feast, the reckoning. Twenty-four hours later, a notable national newspaper becomes the first to put in a metaphorical boot. There are snide references to urbanism, multi-cultural tumult and, to my wide-eyed disbelief, even the Yorkshire Ripper.
Come on! Everybody needs a boost, and this is a shot in the arm for Bradford, its on-going cultural heritage of cinema and for the people who call it home.
Lazily tainting it with out-dated references to riots (in 1995 and 2001; we've moved on) and the Ripper (caught nearly 30 years ago) is about as nauseating as it gets. Why not describe London as being notable for its own serial killers, the 7/7 bombings or the G20 protests that led to the death of Ian Tomlinson?
It seems the north/south divide lives on in the eyes of many. News reports began with the disbelieving words that Bradford had beaten the likes of Cannes and Los Angeles to the finish line.
What most never once stopped to think was whether either place had submitted its own bid.
Bradford's heritage of film can be dated back to 1896, just eight years after the first moving pictures were taken in Leeds by Frenchman Louis Le Prince. Yorkshire was the birthplace of the movies. And had not the Great War effectively destroyed Britain's fledgling film industry by 1916, the world's first film centre could have taken root here rather than Los Angeles.
By the turn of the last century Bradford was making movies. Over the course of 100 years it has hosted timeless classics, waved off some famous sons and become a magnet for filmmakers. So it rankles when some indolent, ignorant hack takes a good news story and spikes it with yah-boo malice. Churlish ain't the word.
The City of Film project should be embraced, applauded and driven forward with pride. I say that unapologetically as one of the project team. But I say it more as an advocate of a once great city that could be great once more.
I suggest people switch channels from Britain's Got Talent to a new show. It's called Bradford's Got Talent. Because it has. In abundance.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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