Screen Tiree

We live very remotely in a small community, screening films enables the community to come together exposes them to different worlds, cultures and ideas. 

Due to the state of the equipment in the cattle market (the projector was very old and there was no screen) the screenings began as a Film Club via Into Film and were aimed solely at young people aged 5 – 19 years old. This was fantastic as it enabled us to build an audience and take risks with programming without the film hire costs. There are approximately 100 children on the island of school age, with the secondary only having 24 students, using Film Club meant that we could put a (15) certificated film on even though there were only 10 young people of that age who could come and see it.

Through running regular screenings and proving a need we applied to the BFI Neighbourhood Fund and were successful in a bid for new equipment. Without the BFI Neighbourhood Fund we would not have developed our screenings from the Film Club we ran via Into Film to our community cinema, Screen Tiree. Through setting up our Community Cinema we have formed a committee which includes two young people, one aged 11 and one aged 24 years old. We still run the Film Club as well as screening family films through the community cinema and have plans to develop these further by forming a group of young film programmers to take ownership of Film Club. We have moved the cinema from the Rural Centre to the community hall, An Talla, which is much more accessible and comfortable.

Becoming a Community Cinema enabled us to join Film Hub Scotland and received support from them, including funding to start our group of Young Film Programmers and support to take part in training and networking.

We celebrate the shared experience by building an audience and interest in a culturally diverse programme and engaging them with activities, talks and other forms of participation. This year we screened both I, Daniel Blake and Moonlight before their DVD release.

We have run two mini festivals thanks to support from Into Film and the local school and in March 2018 held our first film festival Sea Change Powering Women in Film. The festival had public screenings and talks and an industry lab aimed at women in film exhibition.

Headline results

We have had 30 screenings.

Over 1500 instances of participation in project including those who attended screenings, workshops and sessions at the school.

An average audience of 38 per screening.

It enabled us to successfully bid for new cinema kit from the BFI Neighbourhood Fund which has vastly increased the quality of what we do.

We received funding from Tiree Community Development Trust to purchase IPads for the young people to make their own films and screen them.

It led to Into Film running a film roadshow on Tiree in 2016 which was both in school and out and where they paid for the pupils from Coll Primary to come and stay on Tiree and take part for two days alongside the pupils from Tiree High School.

Last year we received funding from Into Film to run Animated Tiree, building on the success of the Roadshow the year before. Where we delivered workshops and screenings in school and out with a special visit from Jim Parkyn from Aardman, he worked in school for a day, introduced the public screenings and ran a Morph making workshop for adults.

We have received funding through Film Hub Scotland’s Atomic Fund to develop a young film programmers group and are working with Regional Screen Scotland on developing this network across Argyll, bringing young people together.

Into Film sent a film crew from Working Title Films to film our Film Club for the BFI end of year report.

We made a homage to Trainspotting to promote our screening of T2 Trainspotting, this reached over 10,000 people on Vimeo and resulted in reports on Heart Radio and The Scottish Sun, with Irvine Welsh tweeting the he loved it. It will be screened as part of Edinburgh Short Film festival and is touring Scotland as part of CineMor 77’s programme. It was also screened recently at the Europa Cinema’s Audience Development Lab in Bologna.

We held our first film festival here in March this year, Sea Change: Powering Women in Film and were nominated for Film Club of the year by Into Film.

All information provided by Screen Tiree