The Leeds International Film Festival returns for its 38th season this November, with screenings taking place at venues across the city.
The festival is one of the largest of its kind in the UK, with work from 83 different countries on the schedule for 2024. Films will be screened across 2 and a half weeks and in 15 venues, including the historic Hyde Park Picture House and Cottage Road Cinema, which both opened in the 1910’s. Wendy Cook, head of cinema at Hyde Park Picture house, said that the runaway success of the event was thanks to the “incredibly passionate and knowledgeable” team behind it.
Cottage Road manager Gary Benn credited the rich history of film in Leeds, dating back to 1888 when the first moving images in the world were recorded in the city by Lois le Prince: “Leeds is such an amazing city for film, it’s where it started.”
Operating for over a century, both Cottage Road and Hyde Park Picture House have previously been threatened with closure. The Picture House, saved by the council in 1989, will celebrate its 110th birthday during the festival. Cook said of the anniversary: “there are so many reasons we could not still be here, so many other comparable venues which have been lost. To be 110 and not just open but full to the brim with films, festivals, partners… that’s very special to me.”
For Cottage Road, which was saved from closure in 2005 in a last-minute buyout by Northern Morris Group, Benn says it is the public who have allowed the cinema to remain open: “We’re totally unfunded at Cottage Road, we are a profit-making business. No matter how much funding we got, we couldn’t continue without the public.”
The overall number of cinemas in Leeds has declined steadily since the 1950s, when televisions became more affordable. Benn believes that the continued survival of these two theatres is down to the difference in their approach: “We’re not in direct competition with each other, I think that’s why it works so well. We tend to play more mainstream films whilst Picture House shows lots of art house and foreign language films.”
Cook also highlighted the diversity of offerings in Leeds, not only from the two cinemas but from “great multiplexes and rich mixed arts venues like the Howard Assembly Room”, which will also host screenings throughout the festival.
Although Leeds can feel lucky to have a thriving cinema ecosystem year-round, both Cook and Benn were keen to stress that a film festival such as LIFF offered something different to a typical cinema experience. Cook, who worked for the festival for 8 years before joining the Picture House team in 2006, said that local film festivals “reflect the wants, needs and passions of their community.”
Benn, who has worked at Cottage Road for 18 years, argued that the diversity of offerings could remind guests that “film is not only a broad medium, but an art form,” whilst also attracting “more diverse audiences.”
The festival kicks off on November 1st with Cardine Tardieu’s The Ties That Bind Us. Picture House will screen thirty different films, while Cottage Road will screen six. Both line-ups include A Real Pain, starring and directed by esteemed American actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network). A full programme is available at https://www.leedsfilm.com/.