Bradford-Based Feature Documentary A Bunch Of Amateurs

The National Science and Media Museum’s Pictureville Cinema will be hosting a special homecoming premiere of acclaimed feature documentary, A Bunch of Amateurs on Thursday 10 November, alongside filmmakers and special guests. The film follows Britain’s oldest amateur filmmaking club, the Bradford Movie Makers, as they fight to save their club and remake a major musical. 

A Bunch of Amateurs is screening at Pictureville Cinema on Thursday 10 November at 19.30. To mark the film showing in Bradford, director Kim Hopkins will introduce the film, with the Bradford Movie Makers participating in a Q&A session after the screening.  

Set and filmed in Bradford, this “hilarious and emotional” documentary follows amateur filmmaking club, the Bradford Movie Makers, as the group grows old together amid flickering memories and challenging final years as they fight to save their club and remake a major musical. The quietly hilarious, profoundly moving film speaks to the delusional escapist dreamer in us all and to the enduring power of face-to-face time together in an increasingly lonely, digital age.  

Commenting on the special homecoming premiere at Pictureville Cinema, Kathryn Penny, Head of Screen and Cultural Engagement at the National Science and Media Museum said: “We are incredibly proud to be hosting the homecoming premiere for A Bunch of Amateurs, an acclaimed locally filmed documentary that shines a spotlight on Bradford’s rich film heritage. The documentary celebrates the magic of cinema and the experience of watching a film together, and we’re looking forward to sharing this with the cast, crew and film lovers in Bradford.”  

Commenting on the film, Director Kim Hopkins said: “A Bunch of Amateurs is set in Bradford in the north of England, in an area where outsiders are treated with eyebrow raising suspicion, and those wielding a camera are outright cold shouldered. I was raised here, so I understand the local codes, working-class sensibilities and the tough history. The ghosts of a prosperous industrial past are everywhere, but Bradford is now one of the poorest cities in Europe. These working-class folks are the collateral damage of an ideologically split society that at best ignores them, at worst somehow holds them responsible. Here, comedy has a very serious function - to ward off the devil, be that devil sadness, loneliness or the Grim Reaper himself. Laughter is a sort of survival mechanism to get you through the bad times. They are good, honest people, the so called ‘salt of the earth’. It is these sentiments that I wanted at the heart of A Bunch of Amateurs.” 

 

A Bunch of Amateurs is directed and produced by Kim Hopkins of Labor of Love Films alongside co-founder Margareta Szabo. The feature documentary has been supported by BFI Doc Society Fund and Screen Yorkshire.  

The homecoming premiere of A Bunch of Amateurs will be at the National Science and Media Museum’s Pictureville Cinema on Thursday 10 November at 19.30.  

For more information and to book tickets, visit: www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/cinema/bunch-amateurs-homecoming-premiere-special-guests-12a