Clearer picture ahead for city’s star movie role that lost focus

The headquarters of Bradford City of Film are well placed given that the street outside was once transformed into Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie. Just around the corner, love-struck David Tennant wooed his American girlfriend next to the quirky setting of a carved sandstone armchair and clock.

Those two films, made more than a decade apart, were Wall of Tyranny and L.A. Without a Map. The former brought jack-booted Eastern Bloc troops to Little Germany, the latter a touch of whimsy to a city that can boast an impressive cinematic heritage stretching back to the 1890s.

David Wilson knows all about Wall of Tyranny, an obscure 1980s TV movie, and L.A. Without a Map, an equally little-known romantic comedy that has vanished without trace.

In fact, 43-year-old Wilson, now coming into his eighth month as director of Bradford City of Film, is steeped in the movies, inventions, artistes and locations that helped it earn UNESCO designation as the world’s first City of Film in June 2009.

Bradfordians were not alone in scratching their heads in bafflement. The national Press had a field day with the Daily Mail shrilly trumpeting the news while maliciously highlighting Bradford’s other dubious claims to fame: urbanism, multicultural tumult and the Yorkshire Ripper.

It was a low blow and, even now three years later, Wilson accepts that many people in the district and beyond don’t understand the UNESCO designation, what it represents or Bradford’s status within the Creative Cities Network.

“I was born and bred here. I studied here – I did my degree here. I’ve spent most of my working life in this city,” says Wilson, whose previous role as cultural programmes manager for Bradford District Council meant he was on the periphery

“City of Film is about perceptions and there are so many negative perceptions of Bradford. City of Film is a true positive story. You can’t take that film heritage away – that’s why we’re City of Film – and the reason the National Media Museum is here is partly due to that connection to film. A big part of the bid was around Bradford’s contribution to early cinema.”

If Wilson sounds slightly defensive, he is. In post since November 2011 he inherited a £500,000 project that appeared to have lost its way. Notwithstanding the managing partnership of the council, the Media Museum and Screen Yorkshire little real progress appeared to have been achieved by the time the first director, Peg Alexander, left the job in December 2010 after only 14 months.

A stand-in director was then appointed after which followed a period of limbo. Having secured the designation the project was adrift.

Wilson’s mission is one of revitalisation. Bullish, industrious and proud of his birthplace, he hasn’t let the grass grow under his feet.

A trip to the UNESCO Creative Cities Conference in Montreal led to the offer of partnerships with other contemporaries. Wilson met senior figures from the Toronto and Pusan film festivals. There was a link-up with Sydney, now officially the world’s second City of Film. And over the next 17 months he expects to make up for lost time with a string of events, new festivals and educational activity.

The newly-energised City of Film is to retain its four central themes – Enjoy, Learn, Make, Visit – because the structure appeals to partner organisations like Bradford Chamber of Commerce, Bradford College and University of Bradford, all of which are represented on the board chaired by Steve Abbott, the Bradford-born producer of A Fish Called Wanda and Brassed Off.

“The ‘Learn’ agenda is very big,” says Wilson. “Bradford was heavily involved in a 21st century literacy pilot, which finished in December. Fifteen primary schools were involved and the results were brilliant.

“There was a marked improvement, particularly among boys. Suddenly they were engaged in the curriculum [because] they were being talked to in a format they understood: moving images. It’s now our intention to roll out a film literacy strand in all Bradford schools and track the progression from primary to secondary and then to further and higher education.”

Some funding has been secured for teacher training and the British Film Institute will also provide resources. In addition for three years from September the University of Bradford is to fund a PhD to research the effectiveness of film literacy in the district.

“That’s probably our USP,” adds Wilson. “If we pull it off we’ll probably be the first city in the country to have a film literacy strand embedded in all our schools and we’ll have the robust academic research to back it up.”

From the beginning of 2013 City of Film will partner with Cine Yorkshire to take digital cinema equipment into five pilot areas to address the cultural need for film. Among the groups is a women-only Asian film society. There will be a “massive” open-air family film show in the new City Park on a 50ft-high inflatable screen. And Wilson is keen to host both a young people’s film festival and a world cinema festival in the city.

He points out that 2013 marks the centenary of the first Bollywood feature film. To celebrate there will be special screenings, an exhibition and, with BBC Music, an hour-long performance of Bollywood Carmen broadcast live to the nation from City Park.

Until 2008 Bradford hosted four separate annual film festivals. In 2009 the National Media Museum made the decision to reduce Bradford International Film Festival from a 16-day to an 11-day event. And in 2010 the world cinema-themed Bite the Mango Film Festival was axed after 15 years. Dwindling attendances and a failure to engage with “hard to reach communities” were blamed.

“Losing Bite the Mango was a real shame. It could and should have been saved,” observes Wilson. “There should be some kind of world film offer [in Bradford because] there’s a real appetite. There’s a big gap at the moment.”

But in a city where film festivals have been reduced is there space in the city for a children’s event and should it be the over-stretched and under-funded National Media Museum that runs it?

“It doesn’t have to be. I would like to see us increase the number of film festivals and it needn’t be an arduous task. Toronto has more than 80 film festivals a year. Bradford should have film festivals every other week and it shouldn’t all fall on the shoulders of the National Media Museum to organise. They are realising that they can’t do everything in terms of film and media.”

Wilson’s short-term aim is to grow film audiences and cement the city’s relationship with the British Film Institute which has been tasked with distributing funding to venues, festivals and projects.

His longer-term goal is to create a permanent exhibition space for City of Film. He wants to highlight the district’s past glories via the pioneering giants of early cinema, Oscar-winning sons such as director Tony (Charge of the Light Brigade) Richardson and Simon (Slumdog Millionaire) Beaufoy; classic (and not-so classic) films like The Railway Children, and the district’s reputation as a diverse and film-friendly location for production.

“City of Film is about capturing that specialness that happens in Bradford, and there’s lots of it,” states Wilson. “Obviously time is an issue and I’m a one-man show. But I’m quite a terrier. I won’t really take no for an answer. And I think I’ve come a long way in six months.

“I speak to Steve Abbott on a weekly basis and he is a strong supporter. The council has always funded this scheme – it cost half a million quid to get this – and it had the foresight to invest in my position. We have a budget of £50,000, which is significantly less than the previous director had, to cover the four different strands. I have to spend it wisely.

“Since slipping into world recession the whole landscape of the film sector has changed. The British Film Institute holds all the cards now and we don’t quite know how it will work out but Bradford wants to be a hub [in that national operation].

“We are smack in the centre of the country, Yorkshire is the biggest region and we ought to have a say in the future of British film. If I have my way, we will.”

Bradford – a city with grand film heritage

In June 2009, Bradford was designated as the world’s first UNESCO City of Film because of the its rich film heritage, its inspirational movie locations and many celebrations of the moving image through the National Media Museum and annual film festivals.

Bradford has been a film location since the beginning of cinema, with its indigenous film industry being traced back to the years around the First World War.

By then the residents of Bradford had already witnessed important contributions to cinema development, such as the invention of the Cieroscope in Manningham in 1896.

One of the first cinema shows outside London took place on the site where the National Media Museum now stands, in a music hall known as the People’s Palace.