Film Trust Blog

Julie Faveur interviews Felix, Sylvie and Johnny, the creators of the Projector Tank, a solar panel cinema which, after touring around Romania at the beginning of the year, has now landed on Parker’s Piece to show a prime selection of environmental and political shorts and feature films.

How did you guys get together for this project?

Felix - We all went to university together. The idea emerged between me and my ex-girlfriend, Beth, who wanted to be a documentary maker. However, we were aware that we would have problems to do with distribution. The amount of films being created was rising because of new technologies, digital cameras, editing suites, etc. but it was as if the distribution channels hadn’t changed. But we knew that there were other small cinemas out there and we wanted to be part of that network.

Where did you get your films from?

Felix - We got our films from as many places as we could because we wanted to screen films for free. Unfortunately, if you’re paying for licence fees, it gets expensive. The first source we looked at was contacting film directors directly, especially emerging filmmakers, and try to persuade them to let us show their films for free. The problem is that you’ve got to spend so much time contacting people and, once they send you the films, you might not even like them.

Did you target certain filmmakers in particular?

Felix - It depended. If we saw anything we liked, then we would contact the director. The other thing we did was posting on film and documentary making forums. So we ended up spending a lot of time trawling through the films people sent us, which was great but a bit time consuming nonetheless. Obviously, it took us a long time to build up a programme whilst at the same time having to manage all the equipment and doing PR… It’s basically someone’s job.

Did you do it all at the same time?

Felix: Yes, all the different strands of the projects ran at the same time so as I was building the technical side of things with Johnny and another friend that was an engineer, we also had to source films and go through funding, which we got through the Cambridge City Council.

So how long did it take you to build the Tank?

Felix - We wrote all our funding applications in January of last year but we didn’t get the money until the beginning of the summer, which kind of tied our hands a bit. I also decided to repaint the (ex-ambulance) van with brushes and that took a really long time! We decided against the easy paint job, we thought “Let’s go for old school coated paint” but it was really slow. Fortunately, we eventually got all the equipment together by August and we got going by October.

Can you tell me more about your Romanian tour? Did you get funding for it?

Sylvie - We got funding from the EU to do a joint project with a group of friends that we knew there. They are called Komunitas and they are also an NGO. They had not done a cinema before but they had been running lots of projects in Bucharest, in various neighbourhoods, and had many useful contacts. So once we got the money form the EU, in March, we went there to do screenings in schools, where we would organise sessions combining films and discussions. We went there every week and, although the kids were a bit shy at first, they ended up really enjoying it.

Did you show films in Romanian?

Sylvie - It was a mixture. In some schools, they spoke English so we would show films in English with subtitles. In other settings, we would just show films in Romanian. We also screened old silent films and films without dialogues. But when we did community screenings in villages or neighbourhoods, it was definitely a bit more chaotic. Then it was more of an event than a screening because people weren’t prepared to sit through hours of films, so they had music and lots of other stuff going on.

So what are you going to do after this?

Felix - We are going to the Secret Garden Festival (July 26 - 29), and then to the Big Chill on the 3rd of August, where we’ll be teaming up with The Magnificent and Revolutionary Cycling Cinema, another similar Cambridge-based project. Overall, our long-term aim is to meet other environmentally friendly people and to get a network going so that we can raise awareness amongst people and help things change in the near future.

For more information, see also:

- The projector Tank Website: http://projectortank.org.uk/
- The Magnificent and Revolutionary Cycling Cinema: http://cyclecinema.wordpress.com/
- Creative Commons and free licensing: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses
- Komunitas (for those who can speak Romanian): http://www.komunitas.ro/