The man on a mission to give Bradford back its film festival

David Wilson is in his element. The director of Bradford City of Film is packing up his office in Little Germany ahead of a move to a new base at the university, but he’s cleared a space between the cardboard boxes overflowing with DVDs and framed film posters so he can run through a short powerpoint presentation.

He’s keen to show the impact the City of Film status has had. Bradford was the first to be awarded the title by the international heritage organisation UNESCO back in 2009 and there are slides peppered with statistics about the economic importance of the film industry. Others run through the various schemes and projects which have been launched under the City of Film banner and there’s one which lists some of the world’s other City of Films.

Galway, Rome and Sydney have all since been awarded the status along with Santos in Brazil, Bitola in Macedonia and the South Korean city of Busan. They are all very different in terms of demographic and geography, but they do have one thing in common - an annual International Film Festival.

So too did Bradford. Or at least it did. Launched in 1995, the BIFF attracted a host of big names from John Hurt to Richard Attenborough. It grew to 16 days of screenings, talks and workshops, but two years ago the National Media Museum, which organised and hosted the event, announced it wouldn’t take place in 2015 while a review of all its events took place.

Nothing more was said until earlier this month. When news broke that the prestigious Royal Photographic Society Collection, also held at the NMM, was to be shipped down the M1 to London’s V&A, the museum’s director Jo Quinton-Tulloch also announced that the film festival would not be returning. The official line was that the NMM would be concentrating on the science elements of its collection and neither the archive nor the festival fitted into its future plans.

“Let’s just say the phones in this office rang a lot that day,” says Wilson, who admits that while he and other interested parties had been in talks with the NMM about the future of the BIFF, they only found out it had been dropped when the story appeared in the Yorkshire Post. “Of course we were disappointed, but if there is one good thing to have come out of all of this, it’s that we have realised just how much love there was for the festival and how much will there is to bring it back.”

Wilson is too diplomatic to openly criticise anyone at the museum for the decision, but he has scant regard for the senior management of the Science Museum Group which runs the attraction, along with York’s National Railway Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

“Who is Ian Blatchford to tell us whether Bradford can have an International Film Festival or not?,” he says, referring to the SMG director. “Yes, it was something that was begun by the NMM, but there are plenty of other people in this city who able to stage a film festival. We have every intention of bringing it back next year. It is unlikely to be on the same scale as the festival of old, but it will be back.”

Wilson grew up in Bradford and he is fiercely proud of the place. He hopes that the NMM will want to be involved in the BIFF’s reincarnation, but for him the festival is much more about promoting the area’s film heritage.

“This city’s film heritage goes back to the final years of the 19th century,” he says. “In the 1890s, Bradford was an incredibly affluent city and a number of wealthy businessmen brought the early pioneers of cinema to Yorkshire. In fact some of the very first film screenings outside London took place at Bradford’s People’s Palace and it’s heyday the city was home to 56 cinemas.”

Somewhat ironically, the site of the old Palace Theatre is where the NMM now stands. It’s decision to axe the BIFF raised more general concerns over the future of film in Bradford, but Wilson insists that the wider industry is in good shape. While the iconic Bradford films will probably always be Billy Liar and The Railway Children in recent years the number of productions being shot in this part of West Yorkshire has sky-rocketed. It’s partly due to the introduction of Government tax credits which have made filming in Britain a more attractive prospect, but also down to the work of Screen Yorkshire.

In the last 12 months, Bradford has hosted a major Bollywood production, which saw a nearby quarry doubling for Karachi and Drew Barrymore brought a little Hollywood glamour to the city with the filming of the comedy drama Miss You Already. Now when people call Yorkshire, Yollywood it’s only slightly tongue in cheek.

“Six years ago when the Government pulled its funding for all regional screen agencies, many people thought it would be the death of Screen Yorkshire. In fact it’s been the making of it. That’s what I feel about the film festival. The NMM has pulled its investment, but what we’ve got now is a blank canvas. It will be a challenge but I think there’s enough support to make something really special.

“Bradford is really starting to make a name for itself as a great place to film. The architecture is incredibly diverse and because the countryside is also easily accessible it’s an attractive proposition for many filmmakers.

“When I joined City of Film five years ago if someone wanted to bring a production up here they might have had to contact a dozen different people just to put the logistics in place. I wanted us to be the first port of call and now we are a one stop shop which has made a massive difference.”

A man on a mission, Wilson has also run awareness workshops with some of the city’s hotel staff about the importance of Bradford’s UNESCO status, which he says is far reaching.

His office runs surgeries for aspiring filmmakers, it’s been involved in the Memory Bank project which uses old film footage to stimulate memories amongst dementia sufferers and it is already supporting a number of smaller film festivals, including the Drunken Film Fest concentrated on a number of bars in North Parade. This summer will also see the launch of the Bradford Family Film Festival with outdoor screenings in City Park.

However, Wilson is not underestimating the task in front of him. While much was made of the BBC’s decision to move a chunk of its operation to Salford, he says the organisation hasn’t quite delivered on its promise to promote a more northern and diverse voice.

“Most of the work and new opportunities have been in Manchester and the surrounding area. It’s great if people want to use Yorkshire to film productions, but I think we should aim to be more than a backdrop. While the creative industries is one of the fastest growing sectors in this country there was some depressing research recently which showed 92 per cent of those working in it are from affluent background. Bradford alone can’t change that, but I honestly believe that we can be a part of the solution.”