Day 3, Morning session

Pre Panel session with Karen

We started off by watching a fascinating short film from the late 1800's called 'Sambo and two girls'. A 2 minute document with a central black character 'clowning' up a stereotype of a black male.

Interesting point about the pervading cultural norms & etiquette of typical cinema environments not necessarily tallying with the audience expectations. 

For example, why is it less usual for people to be able eat, drink, talk and interact in a cinema space - particularly when this is what is expected, desired or considered the norm from some audiences.

Essentially, this point is about both flexible and broad access to cinema and the quality and relevance of the experience.

Are traditional cinema environments geared up, suitable or open to this? 

This discussion brought out the varied and more sophisticated approach that exhibitors of Black film often naturally or have to consider; be it choosing using more flexible spaces, that sit outside the normal cinema network or using existing and direct relationships to particular communities and outreaching them both via face to face contact and through digital/social networks.

Secondly we watched a 30 minute documentary about Olaudah Equiano.

Followed by a really illuminating exercise where were challenged to explore three scenarios of how we would market the film, looking at it in terms of youth audiences, Current Festivals and Art House cinema audiences.

It was interesting to see the different strategies the groups explored, in terms of how we described the film according to our target groups.  

Early submission for a quote of the day came from Peter Fraser who engagingly pitched the marketing strategy for Art House audiences including the interesting suggestion that "Morally speaking you should see this film"!

We've been asked to write up our notes on the piece - which will hopefully be linked from this blog - so check back!

Third film to digest and consider how we would pitch/market/disseminate according to the three scenarios of Current Festivals, Youth and Art House was by Charles Burnet called the Horse from 1973.