Outside of Ireland's three dedicated arthouse facilities, cultural cinema is largely provided through access>CINEMA’s network of film societies. Its Director, Maretta Dillon, tells Lir Mac Cárthaigh about their work.

The nuts and bolts
:There are three of us working for access>CINEMA full-time, and there are 41 groups. That sort of gives an indication of the level of the work involved. At the most basic level we are a booking and dispatch agency. We send out information to our groups about what’s available for the format they’re screening on, DVD or 35mm. They make their choice, with guidance and direction, about what they would like to programme in their upcoming season. There are 16 groups on 35mm, so that’s 16 different sets of choices, and we co-ordinate all of the bookings. If you go to a distributor and say you’ve got ten bookings for The Beat that my Heart Skipped, you can ask for a better discount on the hire fee, and you can share one print, so the same print goes around Ireland rather than going in and out all the time. Once we’ve booked in the programme we confirm what date the booking is for; we send out short and long synopses, images, and credits so they can produce brochures for their venues or society. Then we physically get the film in and push the film around the country. We get the returns and send them back to the distributor, they invoice access>CINEMA, and then access>CINEMA invoices the organisations. Those are the basics, the nuts and bolts. And it’s incredibly important that the nuts and bolts go very well, because you’re representing your members, and there’s nothing in it for them if you’re not doing that proficiently.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 108.