Save the mobile cinema service that brings films to remote communities
◆ Urbanites just don’t understand the thrill of the Screen Machine
Last week Dame Judi Dench wrote to the First Minister adding her support to the campaign to retain the Screen Machine.
It is something we should all do, to show support for the rural Scottish communities who have benefited from Hollywood coming to them, on the back of a lorry, for the last 25 years.
Urbanites just don’t understand the thrill of the Screen Machine – in fact many don’t know that it exists.
When my son, brought up in a tiny community on the West Coast, mentioned it in passing to his big city friends, it provoked disbelief.
But for those of us who live in an area without many cultural outlets, the rumbling arrival via ferry and singletrack road of the bright blue behemoth, and the unfolding of it in a hotel car park or on a shinty pitch, is a delight at any age.
The Screen Machine descending on your village changes your plans for the coming days. Parents get together to shepherd the kids – in some places, taking every child in the local school plus mums and dads comes nowhere near to filling the 78 seats available.
The filmic fayre usually consists of three current movies. The range of offerings is impressive too – I’ve seen action blockbusters, romances and animation, designed to cater for a wide taste, but always good quality.
Sometimes there are short films, Scottish gems and in the past at Christmas, there have been one-off screenings of classics such as It’s a Wonderful Life.
Seeing a film with your whole community has some interesting outcomes. The current schedule includes Wonka, One Life and Poor Things. The latter apparently contains scenes of a sexual nature, so in these cases you have to choose where to sit carefully. I’ve previously chatted with elderly neighbours at the beginning of a film, only for them to shoot off with red faces as it finished, if the love scenes were a little racy.
Best of all, before each screening, there is a short film about the service, showing all the places the lorry visits. If the audience cheers loud enough when their village appears, the projectionist will rewind to let you do it again.