Merton Mums Cinema Group

[tlcpictureshows]

Hello Merton Mums!

I wanted to introduce myself, I'm Ben and I run The Touring Local Cinema (www.tlcpictureshows.com) we put on dementia friendly picture shows in care homes and community centres.

My wife and I are having our first baby this year and we were looking around at activities and we thought that maybe we could offer a cinema club for parents, I would like to use this thread to get a measure of interest from you all so please leave comments/suggestions and ideas as it would be a film club run for the benefit of those that wanted to come along.

*All films can be chosen by the parents (the company has an umbrella license that means we can watch anything form old classic right up to things that you missed in the cinema).
*it will be much cheaper than going to the cinema!!
*we can all understand and forgive a bit of noise.
*and we can choose the times that work best for everyone.

I look forward to reading your thoughts and hope that this is something that will interest many of you!

Warm regards,

Ben

Hi Ben
Sounds a great idea.

Sent too early...were you thinking in the daytime for parents & children or in the evenings for mums/dads?
I'm an occasional attender of Wimbledon Film Club which is good but would be nice to have a say in the films.

I think Ben that you could consider two options (although there may be overlap):

a) for mummies (and possibly daddies) with little ones during the day. HMVCurzon stopped doing its 'parents and babies' viewings (a great loss to those who love art-house films) so there's a gap in the market to be exploited. Obviously the Odeon still does an equivalent but much more mainstream options.

Having it in an informal but congenial environment would be key though. You would almost need to go down The Gorringe Park route - find a Merton-central pub which would host. I know that many of the pubs, in a bid to expand their appeal, are going down the families-market route (think The Bedford in Balham which does it bigtime), so worth checking out?

b) as you initially suggested when you contacted me, the option to have one (evenings most likely?) to tie-in with book group novels etc...would be great (although I cannot think we've yet read one that has been filmed, although I'm sure there will be some in the pipeline!).

Thank you for raising the notion - it's a great one and I for one would be interested too!

Hi Foxforce5,

depending on the audience both are definitely an option, and so doing both wouldn't be out of the question.

If there is a gap for a daytime art-house film screening that people would be interested in then I would be very happy to trial that and then we can decide films on a month to month basis democratically?

I shall get in touch with some Merton pubs and see if it's something they might be interested in as they may be keen to get a little extra trade during the daytime. I shall report back here with the findings!

If other people have any ideas please feel free to contribute as it would be great to hear from as many people as possible.

Best wishes,

Ben