Just got back from an amazing weekend at the Dinard Film Festival – an annual celebration of British Film in Northern France. It’s at this festival that the best new UK movies are presented to the UK and French film industries, as well as to the discerning French film-goer…so a good barometer of the future success (or not..) of the selected films.
Screen WM was very proud to be at Dinard supporting the forthcoming movie CLUBBED, which was one of just six films to be selected for competition.
CLUBBED is the true-life story about Coventry bouncer Geoff Thompson, which was shot in Birmingham last year - made by Formosa Films’ dynamic duo Neil Thompson (Director) and Martin Carr (Producer) and co-financed by Screen WM through our Media Production Fund
The film has a real gritty, British flavour but with a beauty and truth that we felt audiences across the world would relate to…so how did it go down with the famously hard to please French?
We had a taste of things to come at the first screening on Thursday. Following a brilliant presentation by Martin Carr, who was joined by actors Scot Williams (Sparky) and Shaun Parkes (Rob), the opening credits started to roll with Chic's classic anthem Good Times – the whole audience started clapping and dancing in the aisles…and with the closing credits came a standing ovation.
The next day Neil Thompson, Colin Salmon (Louis) and Mel Raido (Danny) joined the gang, flying in from successful press screenings in the UK, and things went off the scale. The next two screenings saw people queuing round the block and were received with similar warmth, humour and passion.
Walking round Dinard the cast were mobbed on every corner by both the French and British. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – people really seemed to have connected with the film.
Martin and I were also able to promote the film to the UK/French film industry, as CLUBBED was selected by the UK Film Council as the main case study at their prestigious Producers Forum event on the Friday. We talked about the way the film had been financed and the various ways in which Screen WM has supported the film – whether through development of Geoff Thompson as key regional talent, locations and crew, test screenings or the forthcoming Birmingham premiere. Again, the feedback from industry was very positive.
What a fantastic start to the public life of the film! We're now working hard to make sure we get the same reaction when it’s released in the UK in early January…