Oct – Dec 2014
They Eat Culture, in association with Film Hub North West Central, took part in the BFI’s Days of Fear & Wonder sci-fi season, the largest ever themed film festival in the UK with over 1000 screenings across the country .
An ambitious two month programme, Future Preston Tours was also the biggest film season in Preston and transporting citizens through space and time to experience three live large scale, site specific, immersive film screenings, plus a range of participatory tours, audio-visual experiences and workshops all exploring themes of Future Preston. A supportive programme of screenings also took place at The Continental and Sci-fi Trash Cinema public domain screenings were shown at The Ferret venue.
They Eat Culture worked in collaboration with UCLan BA (Hons) students from Contemporary Performance, Film Production, Interior Design and Architecture, who worked on live briefs to create magical sets and immersive performance pieces, whilst working alongside local groups and commissioning audiovisual artists across the project.
E.T.
Space Tour in Avenham Park and Christ the King Catholic School screening.
The Space tour brought the wonder of ET to life for a new generation to experience this family classic. Audience members were asked to envisage and illustrate how Preston could be in years to come. Preston Future Tours operatives guided the audience on an enchanted bike ride through Avenham Park where they encountered and became embroiled in a chase between FBI agents and the BMX riding characters from the film.
The tour led onto a wonderfully set dressed scene at the school for more performance, photo opportunities with ET, hot food and a space tuck shop prior to the film screening and magical moon lit tour back through Avenham Park to complete the evening.
Additional Partners -performance: Preston Youth Theatre & The Preston Pirates BMX racing school.
DREDD
Civil Liberties tour and 4th floor of Winckley House screening.
In collaboration with Comic Convention at the Guild Hall audience members were marched and manhandled through the streets of Preston by a group of mean, menacing Brit-Cit judges. At the venue, once passing through tight security, they ascended the stairs to the transformed interior lair of the Slo-Mo drug lord Ma- Ma and her ruthless clan. And were met met with a shoot out performance, live music, talks and dj sets before the main feature screening of Dredd (2012) – Directed by Pete Travis – commenced.
The evening was compered by John Rob and held in collaboration with- Conversations in Creativity & Creative Lancashire with live music from Blues Harvest .
TRON
Bodies tour from Preston Bus station to 53 degrees
For the season’s grande finale They Eat Culture joined forces with the the team at 53 Degrees, commissioned audio-visual pieces from UCLan’s Music Practice staff, a stunning set from the UCLan Interior Design team coupled with complete projection mapping of the space. The club was transformed into a neon vision of mainframe of Tron.
The evening began at Preston Bus Station. UCLan’s contemporary performance team devised an orienteering game tour specifically tailored around the event.
“The world is changing around us, can you keep up?” This interactive, immersive gaming experience took the audience on a journey through future Preston.
They then stepped into the world of Tron starting in the luminous arcade and bar filled with 80′s purpose-built, themed computer gaming cabinets for all to play, before passing into the neon-gridded mainframe via an eerie live audio commission and strobe filled tunnel. Sound pieces merged into a live performance on the main stage using contemporary dance performer controlled pheromone technology, sound, mapping and a live piano set.
This in turn led into the screening of Tron by director: Steven Lisberger.
The evening concluded with an after party with futuristic DJ sets from Beats of Rage.
The Continental Programme
They Eat Culture hosted 7 sci-fi screenings with workshop events in partnership with the venue, local cultural sector and other partners.
They Eat Culture, in partnership with Deafway, screened a subtitled version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Directed by Steven Spielberg. A British Sign Language video version of the programme notes was created for the deaf audience and made available to watch on mobile. http://youtu.be/iflcAtgyTjE alongside filmed BSL feedback interviews that took place post event.
Film titles information can be found here
Screen Opps
All Quiet on the Preston Front? Developing film businesses in Lancashire.
Panel discussion of emerging and developing film based businesses about their journeys from start up, growing their businesses from a base in the county, to working nationally and internationally in the world of film and media.
This event was part of a Screen Opps collaboration with Creative Lancashire that has seen the development of an emerging screen opps network, which aims to connect local film makers, and others working in the film and media sectors with venues and screening opportunities, funding opportunities and more importantly with each other.
Read more
The Ferret Programme
5 public domain creative commons sci-fi titles were screened on Monday nights for our Trash Cinema programme at The Ferret venue alongside themed sci-fi quiz nights to tie into the overall programme.
For film titles click here
Pop up Archive
UFO Encounters
In collaboration with Filmhub East and Media Archive Central England by accessing their specially developed UFO archive of film ‘UFO Encounters’ was screened to at the Continental venue and Soundskills/Brookfield Community in combination with post screening discussions.
St Andrew’s Primary School
WALL-E
Special screening of the Pixar and Disney animated classic family friendly movie, and recycling discussion, for the children of St Andrew’s Primary School.
Pop up Future Preston Tours booth
The Future Preston Tours booth and branded tour guides, were used to start conversations with people in a variety of city centre locations, including Preston Flag Market and The Continental Beer Festival to gather feedback and drive interest to the up and coming events.
Thank you
They Eat Culture would like to say a huge thank you to all those involved in making our Future Preston Tours event happen. Thank you to all those who contributed to it; either by attending the events or by helping to create them.
And of course special thanks to all our funders and sponsors for making it all possible.
Dedicated Future Preston Tours website here
Created by They Eat Culture with support from Film Hub North West Central as part of BFI’S ‘Days of Fear & Wonder’ national Sci-Fi programme. For more information visit: bfi.org.uk/sci-fi.