Documentary offers window into Bradford Movie Makers, one of oldest filmmaking clubs in country

However, Harry has overcome bigger difficulties. A few years ago the pensioner recreated Superman and he reckons a horse must be more forgiving than the Lycra costume he wore for his own homage to the DC comic book hero. The remaking of Oklahoma in part underpins A Bunch of Amateurs, a new documentary which follows the highs and lows of the Bradford Movie Makers as the club approaches its 90th anniversary and undoubtedly one of the most joyful films of the year.

It has been lovingly crafted by York-based filmmaker Kim Hopkins, who, having previously turned her lens on everything from a young mother trying to escape life in a remote Cuban fishing village to American folk singer Woody Guthrie, was keen to focus on something closer to home.

“I knew I wanted to make a film about a club,” she says. “Many years ago I was a member of the Harley Davidson Riders Club and thought that would be a good starting point. However, they weren’t receptive to the idea, so it was back to the drawing board.”

It was then that the algorithms of Facebook aligned and sent a post from the Bradford Movie Makers straight to Kim’s timeline. It was written by Joe Ogden who explained how he had been quite lonely before joining the club and how filmmaking had belatedly given him an identity.

“It wasn’t a long post, but it encapsulated why people join clubs; it’s a need to belong,” says Kim, who spent more than a year filming the weekly meetings, the club’s various film projects and the members' own lives away from the cameras.

The result is a tribute to one of the oldest surviving filmmaking clubs in the country but it is also a portrait of friendship, of growing old and the sheer joy of having a passion which occasionally borders into eccentricity.

It also captures how for its members, the club provides an escape from the pain and hardship of ordinary life. In one of the documentary’s most moving moments one of the longest serving Bradford Movie Makers turns up to a regular Monday night gathering only to mention that a few hours earlier he had sat by his wife’s bedside as she passed away. He came, he says, because he needed to be with people.

The film’s success is its effortless combination of the heart-wrenching and the laugh out loud funny - much of the latter coming unintentionally from the bickering arising from artistic differences over the progress of Oklahoma Bradford-style.

“When Kim approached us I couldn’t think of a reason not to do it, I wasn’t as though we had a reputation to lose,” says Phil Wainman, whose own foray into filmmaking began some years ago when he spent the money he was meant to use for his education on his first camera. “It seemed like an opportunity and one which came at a time when we really needed it.”

When Kim began filming, Bradford Movie Makers was on its knees. The coffers were empty and the clubhouse, regularly a target of fly tippers and vandals, mirrored the fortunes of the club. In truth they had only survived thanks to a kindly landlord who had waived the rent for the previous five years.

It wasn’t just the financial problems. Membership was also dwindling. While Phil and Harry could talk for hours about their passion, they were struggling to convince others of the joy of making low budget horror movies with titles like Return From Walthamstow and The Haunted Turnip on the backstreets of Bradford.

“It hadn’t always been this way,” says Kim. “The club was one of a number which sprang up across the country during Hollywood’s golden age in the 1930s. In its heyday, its membership was packed with the great and good of Bradford who wanted to bask a little in the glamour of the burgeoning film industry.”

Black and white photographs capture the formality of the club’s early awards dinners, but while wooden boards bearing the names of successive presidents still hang on the walls of the clubhouse when filming began it had lost much of that early glamour.

Instead, meetings revolved around endless cups of tea drunk in a slightly draughty auditorium where in between watching and critiquing each other’s films, members talked about the odds of surviving into another year

“I did wonder whether the end of the documentary might be the club closing and a shot of the cinema seats being thrown in a skip,” says Kim, who trained at the National Film School alongside the likes of Simon Beaufoy.

“That would have been heartbreaking but for a while it also seemed almost inevitable.”

The documentary follows the members' various attempts to revive its fortunes, which includes the staging of vintage film and dance nights that no one else seems to care about much.

When coronavirus hits, the club’s existence becomes even more fragile.

“It was hard,” says Joe, looking back at that history-defining 18 months. “For a lot of us, the club is our social life and suddenly that was taken away.”

It would be wrong to spoil the twist of the documentary, which is released in cinemas on November 10. However, the pandemic ironically threw Bradford Movie Makers a lifeline and rather than being a tribute to a club preparing to pass into history, the documentary is now a celebration of a new chapter and its title isn’t meant to poke fun.

“A few years ago some members wanted to move out of our clubhouse and into a Conservative club,” says Phil. “We put it to a vote and while the majority wanted to stay put, a few were dead set on the move; they wanted it to be a private members’ film club where they just reminisced about the old days.

“One of them stormed out, telling the rest of us we were ‘a bunch of amateurs’.”

It was meant to be an insult, but the club members have always taken it as a compliment.

“Professional films need to make money, but as amateur film-makers we can actually tell stories,” says Joe. “Our stories are just as important as any big Marvel film or any other stuff around.”

The documentary’s blurb describes A Bunch of Amateurs as a “warm and funny look at shared artistic folly that speaks to the delusional dreamer in us all”. Phil puts it even more succinctly.

“Maybe making a short film isn’t important in the universe but if I give up on that, what’s the purpose?”

A Bunch of Amateurs has its homecoming premier at Bradford’s Pictureville Cinema on November 10. Director Kim Hopkins will introduce the screening, which will be followed with a Q&A session with the Bradford Movie Makers themselves. To book visit scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk