Little White Lies On The Road

It’s been a busy week for members of the TCOLondon crew. First up was a trip to Paris to meet a certain legend of the American film industry whose latest release will be gracing the next cover of LWLies.

Then it was straight off to the North East of England on a whistle stop speaking tour.

First up was Sunderland University where TCOLondon was scheduled to give a talk to a class of business and journalism students. Around 40 or so turned up to listen to a potted history of LWLies, and the tension between creative freedom and commercial pragmatism that drives any publication.

From our perspective, it was great to speak to a roomful of people who were genuinely engaged in the subject and seemed to share some of our passion for print and independent publishing.

After Sunderland, we made our way to Newcastle where the Northern Lights Film Festival kicked off on a wet Saturday morning.

TCOLondon was there to promote the festival’s DIY Film Reviewer initiative, which is designed to get festival audiences writing their own reviews of the week’s films, some of which will be submitted to the LWLies website.

Over 50 people braved the weather (and their hangovers) to attend the event, which was held at the absolutely amazing Star and Shadow cinema.

The Star and Shadow cinema, Newcastle

The cinema is run by a collective of volunteers motivated entirely by a passion for the outer edges of creative culture. They stage gigs, hold events and show movies that have been overlooked by the mainstream. We got a VIP tour of the place, which is like a student commune crossed with a media museum – packed with odds and ends of well-worn cinema equipment, screen-printing gear and other exciting stuff.

Our talk on the magazine in general and film reviewing in particular ran to almost two hours, including a lively question and answer session at the end in which we were taken to task over the question of subjectivity and the first-person voice. On a Saturday morning…

The rest of the festival is sure to be a great success, and we’ll look forward to getting involved again next year.