“Thank you to the amazing volunteers for making all this happen”

Customer feedback, “Mrs Lowry and Son” 7/7/2022

Where to start ?

Well after that quote with the Volunteers, obviously! Congratulations to Paul Hayden (left) and Chris Holland (right) who, at Thursday’s screening of “Mrs Lowry and Son” at the Chantry Centre became the 17th and 18th members of the elusive “25 Club”.

Chris and Paul were presented with their high prized engraved glass coasters for volunteering at 25 films – which is a tally of around 112 hours of effort freely donated to support our community.

Their efforts, along with all our other Volunteers last night brought the total number of hours given by all Volunteers across all 126 films since we started in 2015 to just under 7,500.

Chris started as a customer before volunteering to play his sax, entertaining guests pre-show and then migrating to helping out throughout the shows whilst Paul started volunteering in 2018 on our Family Sunday shows. Huge congratulations – and our thanks – to both of them !

Busy, busy, busy!!

“Mrs Lowry and Son” is a very moving biopic about the challenging relationship between artist L.S.Lowry and his mother. There’s little more than its two accomplished stars on screen throughout – Vanessa Redgrave playing the very demanding, yet fascinating mother to Timothy Spall’s L.S.Lowry, a rent collector who through his painting wants nothing more than to please his mother. As the film ended it seamlessly moved to the modern day with a little segment showing Lowry in the museum dedicated to his life in Salford Quays. The show was busy. At 57 it was our biggest audience attendance since moving post-Covid to the Billericay Town Council “Chantry Centre”.

“The first time I have been on a Thursday. Great !!”

Regular volunteers Iris and Pat came along as guests to watch the film and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. “Wonderful interesting film. I visited the Lowry Exhibition in Salford Quays when I was on holiday. Thank you for the VIP treatment. Best wishes to you all“ said Iris.

Our audience included a number of first time visitors, a few library regulars who were joining us at the Chantry Centre for the first time and at least 1 Sunday customer who was making their first Thursday evening visit.

Feedback was very good – 93% of the audience handed in a feedback form (higher than usual !) with the film scoring a solid 9.6 and the evening as a whole 9.8.

A selection of the feedback quotes includes:

• “A charming evocation of one of our most influential artists
• One of the best films I have seen anywhere – thank you!
• Unexpectedly captivating. Thank you.
• Really moving. First class
• Great acting and very poignant
• A well acted film – but so unhappy!

A favourite quote of the evening – because it encapsulates one of the key aims we had when setting up the cinema: to just try the films:

“Not a film I would have gone to see, but I did enjoy it – different and thought”

What can we expect in 2023?

Well the “Long List” is growing ! We’ve already had quite a few requests from customers and Volunteers. Here’s what’s been suggested so far – some are specific films, others are genres or requests for specific actors. But there’s certainly quite a range!!! In the next couple of months we’ll work out what’s technically possible based on film length (2 hours 10 minutes being the maximum length that we show) and licensing (not always possible to get film licenses). Then we’ll group them (so that we guarantee different types of films across the year – for example a comedy, a drama) as well as provide a split across the Sunday and Thursday shows. This will become the Shortlist which will go out to voting.

• The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
• The Navigator
• Carve Her Name with Pride
• Any Bing Crosby/Bob Hope
• Philadelphia Story
• Any Cary Grant/Kathering Hepburn
• Finding Your Feet (2017)
• Romeo & Juliet (the first colour version)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• The Greatest Showman
• Roman Holiday
• Woman of the Year
• The Lemon Drop Kid
• Any Doris Day film
• More Musicals!
• Judy Garland musical
• 7 Brides for 7 Brothers
• Good bye Mr Chips
• Billy Elliot
• To Sir with Love
• The Duke
• Operation Mincemeat
• Psycho
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
• The Keeper
• Yesterday (2019)
• Easy Rider
• The Man who Knew Too Much
• A Man for All Seasons
• Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
• Robin and the Seven Hoods
• First Cow
• Chicago
• Mama Mia 2
• Rocketman
• Blade Runner
• Cinema Paradiso
• Elvis
• A musical
• Alfie
• Educating Rita
• Sleuth
• House of Gucci
• French or Spanish subtitled ?
• More Art House
• A Kind of Loving
• Hue and Cry
• Up the Junction
• The Amazing Mr Blunden
• A Cry in the Dark
• Enduring Love
• The Dolls House
• A Fish called Wanda
• Sons and Lovers
• The Day of the Triffids

Well that’s certainly an eclectic selection!