An emphatically small story with a big heart, A Bunch of Amateurs is a touching documentary about films, friendship and the fragile bonds beween them. Director Kim Hopkins spent months in old-school cine-verite mode, observing the weekly gatherings of Bradford Movie Makers in the northern English city of Bradford, the oldest amateur film club in Britain. The intertwined small-town stories she gathers here are low on drama but rich in emotion, humour, eccentric characters and admirable stoicism against the odds. Positive word-of-mouth buzz, including the Audience Award at Sheffield Doc Fest in June, plus an executive producer credit for Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire) should help this unashamedly low-key charmer reach a wider public following. It screens at Dok Liepzig festival later this week before opening on UK and Irish screens November 11.
Bradford Movie Makers club was founded in 1932 and, like most of its elderly members, has seen better days. A Bunch of Amateurs begins with a warm, sunny, nostalgic montage reeling through the group’s post-war glory year of big audiences and glitzy awards ceremonies. When Hopkins jumps to the present day, the contrast could hardly be starker: dwindling membership, mounting debts, and a dilapidated building that frequently falls victim to vandalism and burglary. With years of unpaid rent behind them, and substantial work required to even make their crumbling clubhouse habitable, the group seem to be facing a bleak future.
But Movie Makers is more than just a cinema club. As Hopkins and her camera follow the members home, it becomes clear just how much of a crucial social and emotional function the group serves. Several are caring for elderly partners, sick spouses and disabled siblings. Weekly club meetings are often their only respite from loneliness and stress, a place to swap jokes and enjoy each other’s low-budget attempts at crime thrillers, superhero yarns and left-field art films. Hopkins includes some fleeting clips of these heroically DIY efforts, but a few more might have added some welcome flavour and depth.
An engagingly droll presence throughout the film is Harry Nicholls, whose film-making forte involves remaking segments of classic movies with himself as the lead. Hopkins chronicles the progress of his latest crackpot notion, to recreate Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma! (1955) with Nicholls playing Gordon MacRae’s role as genial cowboy Curley McLain. The problem is, as a physically frail octogenarian with no horse-riding skills, he is singularly unsuited to the task. Does that put him off? Hell no. Thanks to ingenious use of green screen, a volunteer stunt-woman and some basic digital effects, Nicholls is soon galloping across the high golden prairies of rain-soaked Yorkshire.
A deep dive into a fading subculture in an impoverished corner of post-industrial Britain, A Bunch of Amateurs could have been a melancholy, elegiac affair. In fact, Hopkins finds hope and humour here, not least because the club recently turned its fortunes around thanks to a Covid support grant from the UK government. This plucky underdog story may not have a classic Hollywood ending, but it is no tragedy either. Incidentally, the film’s title comes from a rift that developed between rival factions over plans to turn the group into a private screening club for showing classic movies, ditching the DIY film-making altogether. When this idea was outvoted, one ex-member stormed out, branding the remaining members amateurs. It was meant as an insult, but they adopted it as a badge of honour.
Director, cinematography: Kim Hopkins
Producers: Margareta Szabo, Kim Hopkins
Editing: Leah Marino
Music: Terence Dunn
Production company: Labor of Love (UK)
World Sales: MetFilm
Venue: Dok Leipzig (Audience Award Competition)
In English
94 minutes
