QFT HISTORY
QFT - The People
For the past forty years, QFT has occupied a unique place in the cultural and entertainment life of Northern Ireland. This uniqueness comes from QFT's special ambience (a world away from the local cineplex!), its screenings of new and classic films, its loyal members and audiences and from the many people who have worked 'front of house' and behind the scenes.
To name and celebrate all those in the theatre itself and in the QFT/Festival office over the past forty years would create a list of credits even longer than those of a Hollywood blockbuster. This anniversary celebrates and thanks all of them.
QFT - The Filmmakers...
From the beginning, QFT has valued and nurtured the practice of having special guests from the world of cinema. True, a big commercial cinema might have a premiere from time to time with smiling stars and directors gracing the red carpet, but those glitterati rarely engage with the audience.
Film makers and performers come to a place like QFT not for contractual and commercial reasons of plugging their latest film and gushing about it, but because they like to be able to move out of the publicity machine circuit and engage with people who are stimulated by film. For a small cinema in a small part of a small island, QFT has consistently punched above its weight in terms of the cinematic heavyweights who have visited.
QFT - The Films...
Literally thousands of films, long and short, famous and obscure, classic and modern have been screened at QFT since 1968. Some, such as those screened during Festival time or during the wonderful 100 Years of Cinema series in 1996, appeared only once while others have run for two or more weeks and then come back due to popular demand.
QFT has always been a broad church. It has always championed foreign language films, both individually and in seasons. But at the same time as giving screen time to a quiet masterpiece such as Bresson's Au Hasard Balthasar (Michael Open's favourite film) it could happily and legitimately show, week on week, late night dress-up-and-sing-along performances of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
While home viewing and legal/illegal downloads have had their effects, it's the lesser known classics and the new foreign language and English language indie films that need to be screened properly - in a cinema like QFT with the experience you only get from being in front of a big screen in a comfortable darkened auditorium with many other people.
QFT - The Events...
In several ways the opening film of QFT in October 1968, could be seen as a key event with multiple readings. Louis Malle's Viva Maria! was (a) a film from a well known New Wave French auteur, (b) it was in a foreign language, (c) it had two famous foreign female stars (Bardot and Moreau) whose names were known to more than just readers of the posh broadsheets, (d) it was a ripping yarn and therefore not likely to alienate those who thought any foreign movie was bound to be impenetrable and bleak. So far, so good. Tick all boxes from High Culture to Broad Appeal.
However, it also generated some controversy. Not on the scale of some other films shown later at QFT, but it did serve to show the unique sensitivities and polarities that are so close to the surface in this province. One of the two Marias of the filmâ€TMs title is supposed to be the daughter of an IRA man with a price on his head and a theme heard throughout the film is the need for the people to rise up and throw off colonial shackles. Although the film was set in Mexico circa 1916, the message was pure 1968 and didn't exactly endear itself to the QFT invited audience of rather conservative civic dignitaries in a Belfast that was just waking up to the implications of the Civil Rights movement.
QFT - Publicity and Marketing...
Back in 1968, commercial cinemas would publicise themselves in-house with posters and lobby cards featuring Coming Attractions, and these complemented the trailers for upcoming features, trailers that always spoke huskily of wonders to come.
Cinema owners and managers were dependent on the highly subjective and self glorifying publicity material supplied by the film distributors. Modelling its publicity materials on the National Film Theatre in London, QFT presented a balanced mix of carefully programmed films was written about and illustrated as if it was the catalogue to a major art exhibition.
The QFT programme booklets themselves have changed dramatically in size and format over the years. From handy pocket size to almost broadsheet proportions; all monochrome to full colour and back again. The shape and length of each QFT booklet was determined by shifts in subject matter, changes in printing techniques and, not infrequently, by how much or how little money QFT had in the kitty. Looking at them now is like looking at a history of fashions in film culture, graphic design and economics.
QFT - The Building...
There is a photograph of the former entrance to QFT from University Mews which encapsulates perfectly the joys and travails of the venue for the first thirty years of its life. Generations of patrons will remember (not always fondly!) what it was like to find your way up the Mews and then to queue inside, or more often, outside the doors that led to the narrow lobby of QFT.
Inside, the office was no bigger than a broom cupboard, the ticket machine was on wheels and had to be trundled out and back into the office at the beginning and end of each QFT day. The toilets were not purpose built and frequently their queues contended for precious space with the people waiting to enter the auditorium. For it was, after all, a cinema grafted on to a complex of two university lecture theatres.
The QFT today is part of the QUB Drama and Film Centre in a spacious build that offers a bar and waiting area in a multi-purpose and dedicated environment. There is no hint of lecture theatre austerity in either of the two auditoria and there is state of the art digital projection in QFT1. Film culture is multi-platform and the new centre embraces that. It will be interesting to see what the physical and technological environment will be like when QFT reaches its half-century in 2018.
