One way of sharing your love of film is with a cinema collective. I’ve recently joined one with friends, which has around 200 members and organises via facebook.
Here’s how it works: Every week or so, someone hosts a screening in their home, using a shared projector wired up to a laptop or DVD player. The host lays on some food and drinks and takes a collection at the end to cover the cost (you can ask for a set amount or just leave it informal).
Reasons for setting up/joining a cinema collective:
– Share the films that you love
– Meet new people
– Experience the pleasure of being a host
Around twenty people usually attend our screenings. Last night was my first chance to present a film to the collective (I showed it at my friend Ulysses’ house, as my flat is too small.)
The film I showed was Man On Wire, an Oscar and Bafta-winning documentary about French trapeze artist Philippe Petit who walked between the twin towers in New York in 1974.
The film explains how he planned and executed this amazing feat without the permission of the building’s owners.
Through a mixture of archive footage and dramatised scenes, we get to know the team that helped him, including his long-suffering girlfriend. Petit comes across as a charismatic dreamer who sees wire-walking as a kind of poetry.
It’s a moving story, a must-see for anyone with even a trace of anti-establishment feeling in their soul.
Tom George 
Well, you would be most welcome, Erich! Yes ‘Sugar Man’ is a wonderful, magical story. but that is awful news about the director…I’ve read some news reports online and they say ‘no-one else is believed to be involved’ so yes looks like suicide 😦
Cool idea, Tom. Wish we lived nearer, because I would definitely be in (I make a mean Guacamole Dip).
btw, you’ve probably seen this great doc called, “Searching for Sugar Man” (it won an Oscar for best documentary a couple of years ago). We had some friends over recently and watched it (second time for me) and it was a great film to share and discuss. (Unfortunately the young director of the film committed suicide last week — he was only 36.) Which is unbelievable because the film is so well-done and uplifting and cool.