‘The film theatre was salvation’
The transition from teenager to young adulthood is fraught with all manner of seismic life changes. Not least of which is the sudden realisation that you can’t do much without money. And a weekend job in Woolco isn’t going to keep you in Guinness and Super Noodles for long.
Having left school with two poor A-levels and no interest in university, I found myself staring down the abyss of poverty-riddled unemployment.
My school-friend-turned-QUB fresher, Kerry, let me flatshare for a meagre £40 per month, but even that was a stretch for my slimline piggy bank.
But salvation was just around the corner, literally, in the form of the Queen’s Film Theatre. This backstreet denizen of alternative movies was the darling of foppy-haired students and their grungy lecturers.
I may not have been an academic, but I felt right at home. Plus, getting paid to watch films was definitely within my limited career options. And so began a two-year stint ripping tickets,
flipping seats and telling people off for talking during the show (my favourite bit). It all started in 1989, which, it turned out, heralded something of a golden era for Irish cinema.
From My Left Foot to December Bride, The Field to Henry V (including a visit from darling Kenny Branagh), it seemed no night was complete without another homespun screening.
And, remember, this was slap bang in the middle of the Troubles and decades before Game of Thrones.
Many of these classic Irish films ran for months at the QFT, their scripts indelibly seared into my memory.
I can still hear Ruth McCabe telling Daniel Day Lewis “Let’s drink to Dublin ‘cause Christy Brown was born there”. Or John Hurt in The Field bewailing “Tis me. The Bird”.
Sharing the QFT’s eclectic programme with these local heroes was a Babette’s Feast of foreign and arthouse cinema.
My eyes were opened to the wonders of Almodovar, the neuroses of Allen, the imposing onscreen presence of Depardieu. I found myself absorbed by subtitled films whose subtle story-telling left their Hollywood cousins in the shade. Delicatessen, Romauld et Juliette and The Hairdresser’s Husband were among the many stand-outs.
But I will never forget the first time I saw the heart-wrenchingly perfect Cinema Paradiso. Both myself and legendary QFT projectionist Paul Milligan emerged from its debut screening blinking back tears and stunned into awe-inspired silence. Good films will do that to you.
Back to the paycheck. Well, the money was bad. In fact, in today’s terms, it would have fallen way below the minimum wage. But what it lacked in salary it made up for with some of the best cinema of my life.
I look back on that first job with affection. And I hope today’s QFT torch-bearers get as much out of it as I did.
And I don’t just mean the money.