Heather Bradshaw, an Assistant Film Programmer at the ICO, recently visited Berlin for CICAE’s Arthouse Cinema Training. In this blog, she reflects on the major themes of inclusion, openness, and collaboration which emerged from the course, the connections she made with film professionals from across the world, and the ways CICAE’s training will shape her programming work in the future.
Having worked in the world of film festivals for most of my freelance career, I had begun to explore various avenues of diversifying my professional skillset, with the intent of eventually pivoting into cinema exhibition. Since completing (and thoroughly enjoying!) the ICO’s Cultural Cinema Exhibition course in January, I had been looking for my next challenge, which is when I discovered the CICAE international training course. Not only was it in Berlin – one of the best cinema cities in the world! – I was particularly interested in extending my network to outside of the UK sector, which is what drew me to it in the first place, and after accepting a position with the ICO as an Assistant Film Programmer, I knew the opportunity was sure to help with settling into my new role.
The CICAE Arthouse Cinema Training course marked its 22nd edition this year, taking place in the heart of Berlin’s thriving cinema scene. The programme welcomed over 40 young exhibitors, independent cinema teams and other film professionals to participate in an intensive week-long course, offering a programme of in-depth workshops, lectures and networking opportunities to share best practices with international peers.
It would be a disservice to the many talented speakers on the course to go into too much detail about the lectures and workshops, which were all so thoughtful and intricate, but I hope this summary might inspire a few more UK exhibitors to apply for next year’s edition and experience them for yourselves!
Day 1 – Saying hello and settling in
To kick things off, we were all invited to our hub for the week; SAP Data Space, for lunch before the course officially kicked off. After an introduction from CICAE’s President, Christian Bräuer and Managing Director Sebastian Naumann, we were introduced to our project for the week – Build Your Own Cinema. The project placed us into small groups and asked us to create and present a brand-new cinema space, considering location, audience, programming and suitable funding models. My group included film professionals from the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, Germany and Paraguay, which made for some incredibly interesting and diverse conversations surrounding international exhibition practices. After much discussion, we settled on presenting one of the participant’s existing projects; an independent cinema in Rotterdam called FilmLokaal, which we would work together on creating over the next few days on the course.
To finish our first day, the CICAE invited us to join them at SAP Data Space for an evening cocktail party, alongside our tutors for the week and many other international professionals from the wider film industry. One thing I will say about the course is that they fed us incredibly well, and this first evening of celebrations was no exception!
Day 2 – Global perspectives and archive education
Surprisingly fresh after an evening of welcome drinks, on Tuesday we were treated to a varied selection of lectures, including partnership building, business plan development and an international rundown from ComScore, which gave some useful insights into the UK’s place in the global exhibition sector. My favourite lecture of the day was by the wonderful Camilla Baier and Rachel Pronger from the UK-based film collective Invisible Women, who talked about the complexities of curating archive cinema and framed the importance of educating contemporary audiences with essential cinema history. I found this notion to be particularly inspiring, given that streaming gives the impression of access to everything, when really, as Camilla and Rachel explained, so much content is being lost.
Day 3 – Joining the pack
We started our morning on day three with a coach trip to Wolf Kino, one of Berlin’s most beautiful neighbourhood cinemas, where Anne Mayer and Eva Buchman from the ‘wolf pack’ spoke to us about how they built their cinema through community engagement and a shared love of film. Next, one of our course tutors and the proud Cinema Manager of Lichtburg Filmpalast Oberhausen, Petra Rockenfeller, spoke to us about engaging young audiences, which was a notion echoed by many of our speakers throughout the course. It was interesting to see the parallels in approaches to reaching young audiences between both the UK and European sectors, and I left Wolf Kino with a breadth of fresh ideas and perspectives, as well as a new favourite cinema!
Proceeding some afternoon lectures and extensive project work, we headed over to another lovely cinema; Delphi Lux Yorke Cinema, to see Kelly Reichardt’s new film The Mastermind. As a fan of Kelly’s work, I had high expectations, and it did not disappoint! The film divided our cohort’s tastes, but it’s fair to say that Josh O’Connor was a big hit nonetheless.
Day 4 – Welcoming diverse audiences and stories
Off the back of yesterday’s film screening, we were welcomed into SAP Data Space by MUBI Germany’s Head of Marketing (and another Bradshaw!) Katherine Bradshaw, who presented an interactive workshop on framing The Mastermind for its global release. From a programming perspective, breaking the film down into its strengths, challenges and campaign pillars gave the film a whole new dimension, which is just one of the skills I will carry with me back to my work at the ICO.
Later, another of our tutors and Director of Indiana University Cinema, Alicia Kozma, spoke to us about creating belonging and inclusion in our cinematic practice, which was a real course highlight for me. Hearing Alicia talk about the value of a plurality of audiences, perspectives and stories was restorative, and helped to inform a lot of my contributions to our group project work, surrounding inclusive programming.
Something I really loved about the course was its advocation for collaborative practice. Many of the speakers encouraged us to speak with other programmers and cinema professionals and share ideas, building on a collective model of support and knowledge sharing. Alicia’s talk was particularly explorative of that practice, touching on the principles of curatorial justice and how to work towards a better film eco-system.
Day 5 – Drawing back the curtain
We started our morning once more with a trip to one of Berlin’s leading cinemas, returning to Delphi LUX for an extensive tour of the space and a lecture from Yorke Kinogruppe’s communications expert Daniel Sibbers. We heard insights into the branding practices of Berlin’s leading arthouse cinema chain, as well as fundamentals of creating a strong voice for independent cinema marketing.
In the afternoon, we were joined by fellow Brits Melanie Hoyes and Keir Oldfield-Lewis of the BFI’s diversity and sustainability teams, who spoke about their experience in framing social impact for audiences, in order to leave them with new ideas. Being from the UK, I was already familiar with the structures in place for diversity, inclusion and sustainability practices in our cinema sector, though the insight of shared experiences from the other participants was an enlightening experience.
Programming can be quite a solitary job, yet the opportunity to be a part of meaningful discussions such as this made it feel like an important one, with achievable prospects for collective, social impact as a global sector. Of course, there is no one right way to ensure diversity, inclusion and climate justice in cinema exhibition, given the constant flux of circumstantial and financial challenges, though it was heartening to experience a shared urgency for its activism.
Day 6 – Putting new films on the map
Our penultimate day saw talks from Rotterdam Film Festival programmer Evgeny Gusyatinskiy and Sinema Transtobia curators Bethan Hughes and Galo E. Rivera, centring on the importance of programming films from underrepresented regions and transnational curatorial approaches. Their insight into mainstream vs arthouse cinema and how that relates to diverse programming touched on the ethics of celebrating authenticity, as opposed to manufacturing it, as well as how to give audiences the tools to engage with challenging cinema. What’s more, both talks encouraged us to have courage as programmers to confront hierarchies of taste and cultural gatekeeping, which coincidentally resonated with our group project work.
Day 7 – And now, we proudly present…
Our final day on the course saw each group present their cinema project to a panel of industry experts, made up of our wonderful course leaders from across the week. Our group; Team Sputnik, presented a community-led cinema based in Rotterdam called ‘FilmLokaal’. We discussed that the cinema would comprise of two screens and operate via a collective curatorial model to incorporate community input into the cinema programming. Some of the strands we pitched were:
- UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: Cinema of Silence; featuring little to no dialogue titles that were accessible for all, such as Robot Dreams, Ida, Metropolis and Alice.
- FILM WITHOUT BORDERS: A cross-cinema partnership project which facilitates programming by international independent cinemas, to be presented in our cinema and added to an online cultural database, for other cinemas to use for free.
- NEXT GEN: Bring your Oma!; A project focused on engaging young diaspora audiences by asking them to bring their 1st and 2nd generation parents and grandparents to the cinema, to watch films from their own country, encouraging intergenerational cultural exchange.
We got some great feedback on our project, particularly the programme and branding, which was a great opportunity to put all we had learned into practice. Before jetting off to all ends of the globe, we headed out to the SAP Data Space courtyard once more for a leaving BBQ, reflecting on our time in Berlin with a head full of film and some friends for life!
Though thoroughly engaging and absolutely brimming with essential exhibition knowledge, this course is not for the faint-hearted and requires a certain amount of stamina to get the most out of the week. Preplanning is essential, and knowing when to say no (yes, even to that second slice of cake of the day!) is encouraged. That said, the insight presented from not only the speakers, but also peers from around the world, is totally invaluable. It provides an essential viewpoint when thinking about both programming and exhibition, on an inclusive, global scale, encouraging the collaborative practice that is necessary to work towards a landscape of accountable programming and curatorial justice.
Heather is an Assistant Film Programmer at the ICO, joining after completing three years programming for Glasgow Film Festival. She has also worked for Leeds International Film Festival as their World Animation Competition programmer, IndieCork as their Features and Documentary Panel Lead and is a long-serving member of the Glasgow Short Film Festival programming team. Heather is a keen film writer, with bylines including Talking Shorts, Cineuropa and The Skinny, with curatorial interests in animation, folklore and archival film.