Curtain goes down on city’s Mr Movies
4:44pm Wednesday 27th February 2008
If anyone deserves a Bradford International Film Festival award for services to moviegoing that person is surely Bill Lawrence, the National Media Museum's departing head of cinema.
After more than 16 years of bringing a vast array of films to Bradford and setting up three annual festivals, Mr Lawrence, 54, is packing his film cans and heading off to be creative director of Sheffield Showroom at the end of April.
No-one I know of in the cinema office at the NMM wants him to go; but he's going. Why?
"I've been here 16 years working in a very specialised field. When you reach a certain point in a venture you have to ask yourself whether you can continue to make things happen. New opportunities don't come along very often. When they do you have to take them," he said.
Bill Lawrence has accepted the opportunity to run the four-screen cinema in South Yorkshire. Sheffield doesn't have an international film festival and, apart from Michael Palin, the city does not have the personalities and connections with cinema that Bradford has, as Mr Lawrence himself admitted.
In light of that, his departure looks even odder, especially as he says he will not be getting more money.
"It's time to refresh," he said.
Yet he had already spoken with pride during our conversation about Kenneth Branagh's decision to interrupt his acting schedule to come to the forthcoming 14th Bradford International Film Festival to talk about his career and introduce his movie version of Hamlet.
Bradford itself is not an easy city in which to make things happen.
Bill said: "The Council's regeneration department has been supportive in the sense of what the film festival can do for the city; but I still think there is an awful lot of people here who don't get it. If people bring their businesses to Bradford they want a good cultural environment for their employees.
"I don't know what the answer is. There's an awful lot of talent here but many people feel frustrated because they cannot break through, they cannot get the support they need. The real thing missing in Bradford is confidence and lack of aspiration.
"It's sad to see things like the Java Café and Bradford Festival disappear. When I came here in 1992 the festival was being talked about on national radio."
Festivals and Bill Lawrence have become synonymous in Bradford. His move 40 miles southwards may be particularly worrying to those interested in Bradford's hoped for future as a designated City of Film.
"I have asked Steve Abbott (chairman of the board of Leeds-based Screen Yorkshire) if I can remain involved; I want to see that through. He said he definitely wants me to stay involved. I am not leaving Bradford and its projects with anything less than a heavy heart," he said.
The slight ambiguity in that last remark might suggest that the project won't be going ahead. What Bill intended to make clear was that he was sorry to be leaving not long after the formal bid to UNESCO is made later this month. If successful Bradford would become the world's first City of Film.
The prestige, along with the film festivals, might go some way towards re-establishing the former wool capital of the world's identity as an international city.
"I am only leaving as an employee of the National Media Museum; but I will still give my support to it," he said.
What will he miss when he walks out the door with his bag of belongings for the final time?
"I have already started missing things. I am seeing the film festival as my last one. I have already started to miss it. There are loads of good people here who care passionately about cinema. The NMM is a fantastic place. I came here from a small project in York and I loved it. But it was small. I came to work in a larger environment."
As a result of that move from East to West Yorkshire, Bill Lawrence saw the opening of Pictureville and the multi-million pound remodelling of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in 1999.
On a personal note, he met Jean Simmons who talked about acting with the likes of Marlon Brando and Kirk Douglas. Among the highlights of his recollections are meeting movie producer David Puttnam and being overwhelmed by his modesty and humility.
"I also remember getting a fax from Germany about a widescreen print of How The West Was Won. We spent a year-and-a-half getting it and repairing it. We screened it in 1996.
"We had a full house, and at the end men were coming out in tears. It was a very moving night.
"In 1993 we put on a Script-to-Screen interview with Galton and Simpson - Tony Hancock's scriptwriters. To me these were great heroes. I found out they weren't stand-offish, they were really nice guys," he said.
Another special memory was when the museum reopened in 1999 after 18 months. Pierce Brosnan came to town for the occasion, as did directors and cinematographers Jack Cardiff and Freddie Francis. As a result of that day Cardiff and Bill became friends, something he still can't quite get over.
Before he leaves I expect to see him tear tickets at the door of Pictureville, a job he said he enjoys because he loves meeting the public. He also loves the atmosphere of the auditorium - the red-orange filters making the curtains glow, the lights in the ceiling like stars, the carefully-chosen ambient music as people wait in the red seats for the lights to dim and the curtains to part.
"When I watched Branagh's Hamlet I was in the audience. The pre-performance music was Patrick Doyle's Te Deum from Henry V. The projectionist had timed it so that the music was at its loudest when the curtains opened, and there was Hamlet. That was showmanship. That's what the museum has."
He also remembers the pleasure of bringing out projectionist Tony Cutts to interview him on stage to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of his career behind the scenes.
I asked him if he had any advice for his successor.
"There are still lots of things I would like to see happen. It would be nice to have the café-bar space open all day throughout the film festival. We tried that once but the returns were very small.
"The museum and the city needs to find ways of creating a cinema infrastructure so that there is a centre for film-makers and national journalists who come here. This isn't the finished project by any stretch of the imagination," he said.
- Bradford International Film Festival starts tomorrow and runs until March 15.