At last month’s screening of No-One Knows About Persian Cats at The Basement, we sat down with Barry Yates to find out a bit more about KinoFolk. KinoFolk’s next event is on 10 May, continuing their KinoMusikk series of music-related films with the fabulously animated Chico and Rita. The unique animation brings 1940s Cuba to the screen and a Latin soundtrack brings it to life. This will be followed by a Summer of French cinema. We posed a few questions about the KinoFolk experience.
Why have you started this Kinofolk Project?
It’s something I’d been helping a few guys in Leeds run last year, but being a York resident myself I thought the city needed something like this. The guys at the Southbank Community Cinema do a great job and the Student film societies, but I just felt perhaps we needed something a little bit different really. One of the mains thing we’re aiming for a well is for cinema to be more involved in the arts side of things which is why we are hooking up with a lot of the festivals that happen throughout the year, everything from the Festival of Ideas to Illuminating York. With York being so historical there is a big reliance on theatre and cinema perhaps is seen a bit more for entertainment sake, so I’m keen to have film and cinema be presented in a bit more artistic light in the city.
What makes Kinofolk a unique cinema experience?
It’s pop up cinema, so there is the unique experience of how it’s set up with candle light and cabaret seating to help create this relaxed atmosphere for people to enjoy more than just sitting in a row in a cold, dry place.
What are hoping to achieve with showing these films?
To give people something different really. That’s the main reason to do them as seasons rather than say, right, here is a random film. We try to group them together so, during the spring, we ran a music season to show film through a musical basis without relying on musicals, something a little bit alternative in that aspect. Then, during the summer, we’re going to be running with a French film season, to help showcase cinema in that aspect.
The screening of No One Knows About Persian Cats at The Basement
How do you select what you are going to construct a season around?
It’s a little bit personal, but I can’t always just show films I would enjoy. It’s not just my own personal screening. I find films that I might not necessarily enjoy but fit well into a season and deserved to be showcased. We like to pick the seasons relating a little bit to things happing in the city, our music season has been in The Basement, which has a great history of music, and our French season in the summer is around the Tour De Yorkshire because of the strong French vibe in York following the Tour De France last year, which makes sense to support them and help cinema get a look in.
Chico and Rita UK Trailer
Video via Youtube
This summer we are running with 3 months of 13 French films and each month, starting in June and continuing ’til August, is themed around the French Flag, the red, white and blue. June is red based around survival films and blood with Mutants, Ils and Martyrs on June 28th, then blue on July 12th, around love and kinship and comes with a fair amount of nudity, but that is French cinema, and we’re showing Pierrot le Fou, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and The Dreamers. So, a bit of horror, a bit of nudity & love, and then white month, on August 2nd, is about prejudice, social exclusion and equality with Sans Toit Ni Loi, Les Invisibles and La Haine. Then we close out the season with the Trios Couleurs trilogyRouge, Blanc and Bleu, or red, white and blue on 9th August .
KinoFolk presents Chico and Rita at The Basement on Sunday 10 May 2015, 5.30pm before a Summer of French cinema in June, July and August.