For most of its history, Wrenhaven Film Week has taken place in the dark: in the red-velvet rows of the Asher Arts Centre cinema, where the festival screens around 60 features and shorts across eight days. This year it is also stepping outside. A 14-metre inflatable screen is going up on the Harbourside quay, and six evening screenings there will be free to anyone who turns up.
The quayside programme leans towards crowd-pleasers: a restored silent comedy with a live score from a local trio, two family animations, a documentary about North Sea trawlermen, a classic musical and, on the closing night, an audience vote between three heist films. Up to 1,500 people can watch each show, with deckchairs for the first 400 and space on the paving for blankets.
Ines Varga, the festival's programmer, said the outdoor screen was meant to reach people who had never bought a festival ticket. "Our indoor audience is loyal, but it is also fairly small and fairly similar," she said. "A screen by the water, free, at a time when families are out anyway, changes who walks past and who stays."
Plans for the weather
The organisers have kept the inevitable in mind. If wind speeds rise above the safe limit for the inflatable screen, or rain sets in, the evening's film moves indoors to the arts centre's main auditorium, ten minutes' walk away, with free seats offered on a first-come basis.
A projector does not care whether it is pointed at a velvet curtain or a sail of white plastic; the audience does.
Desmond Kirby, who has run the projection booth at the arts centre for 22 years, has been testing the outdoor equipment on the quay after dark this week. He said the hardest part was not the image but the sound, which had to carry across open water without reaching the flats on the far side of the dock.
The festival has also invited schools across the city to submit short films made by pupils. Twenty of the entries, none longer than three minutes, will be shown before the main feature on the quayside each evening, and a jury of local filmmakers will pick a winner on the final night.
The indoor programme opens on the same night. Tickets for those screenings cost €9, with a festival pass of €45 for ten films.