I feel a sense of pressure to write about that which is closest to hand, the recent closure of the Belmont cinema, a place that I’ve worked at for nearly 15 years.
When I was offered these columns, my first question was: “Do you want me to write in my capacity as head of Belmont Filmhouse?” The polite response was: “No, not especially”, but it is – or, it was – the only capacity that I felt fit around me. Not so much my window into the world, but maybe others’ window upon me.
How could I be understood? I could be understood as someone who managed that cinema.
The truth of that ebbs away. Currently, as of writing, I am still working for the administrator, sporadically. I expect that will end soon, too, maybe in a few days.
On Thursday last week, I attended the opening of DanceLive Festival. This was the first performance, show or presentation I had attended since the day that the insolvency of Belmont Filmhouse and its parent company, CMI, was announced.
The dances were raw and powerful and physical, particularly Born to Exist by Joseph Toonga. Three black female dancers, performing a simultaneously minimal and overwhelming, confrontational dance, to a white audience. A shouted, questioning refrain of: “Can you see me?” from the central dancer that almost made you want to stand up from your seat, and that pointed both to the possibilities and limits of art.
The distance between the dance and the audience. The politeness of complicity. The desire to do something, anything, and the restraint it took to stay in your seat.
Where can we go to be challenged without the Belmont?
I thought of a film, Ruben Ostlund’s The Square, which features a similar but different confrontational performance in a dining hall, at the opening of an exhibition. His follow-up, Triangle of Sadness, had been in our programme, for dates in October that we would not reach.
I thought of the festivals that Belmont cinema would not get to host through the autumn; Take One Action, Sound Festival and French Film Festival. The busiest time of year, and my favourite.
Not all art has to be activism. Not all activism is art
“F**k you,” the dancer said to the audience at DanceLive. Where now can we watch cinema that challenges those who gather in order to be challenged?
Not all art has to be activism. Not all activism is art. It feels like the cross-section of where those two things cross may now be harder to find in this city.
Art and its venues deserve funding
I don’t feel ready to write the whole story of the Belmont Filmhouse and the empty space that now sits where it used to be. I have a view as to how important a space where you can see cinema that you may not otherwise see is to this city. It needs to wait. Patience and sustainability have become ever so important.
Threats loom upon even national galleries in cities far more culturally equipped than Aberdeen. Our arts ecosystem is fragile
On the last weekend of October, many of the city venues that hosted DanceLive will then host Sound Festival. Another celebration of the challenging, the beautiful and unusual. Another celebration of those parts of Aberdeen that dare to put on programmes that pique curiosity and creative freedoms.
Art deserves funding. Arts spaces may need saving over the next few years. They deserve that, too. Otherwise, they may be lost.
2 days to go! With musicians arriving and rehearsals underway, sound festival 2022 is nearly here!
Visit our website for more info and tickets👉https://t.co/mCiwDxs7FH#soundfest22 pic.twitter.com/yh4wWEeoaK
— soundscotland (@soundscotland) October 24, 2022
Every year, Sound Festival features a strand of programming around an “endangered instrument”; brass or string or bass that has become lost to fashion. This year, they will pull together the five endangered instruments of previous festivals to become an “Endangered Instrument Orchestra”. A wonderful idea.
But, what else may be endangered? Entire venues. Threats loom upon even national galleries in cities far more culturally equipped than Aberdeen. Our arts ecosystem is fragile. It is imperative that we not only cherish it, but that we buy its tickets.
There’s an opportunity to have a celebration, even in the aftermath of the death of cinema. There are things happening in Aberdeen. There will not be, if we do not attend them.
Fight to keep the arts sector alive
Eventually, I will have to find another job. It may well not be in a cinema. For security and certainty, I may have to work in another sector. Others like me may face that same decision in the near future. A generation of talent, skill and knowledge, slowly evaporated into “real jobs”.
It's literally being boarded up. GRIM. @Filmhouse @edfilmfest 😶 pic.twitter.com/4Bo4CsYxwi
— Genevieve Fay (@GenevieveFay1) October 17, 2022
When we emerge from this cost of living crisis, we need to ensure that the arts have been sustained, and may emerge too. And those who are passionate, who love and adore it, must still be close to the industry.
I want to say thank you to all the colleagues I worked with over my 15 years at the cinema. All those in the wider cinema and arts sectors, both in Aberdeen and further afield, the business community of the north-east, and everyone in our audience, who made it what it was.
Colin Farquhar is the former head of cinema operations for Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen
Conversation