The Shrieking Violet and Manchester Modernist Society joint event — Newspapers on Film, Saturday December 11

Newspapers on film

Saturday 11th December, 3.30pm-6.30pm

Manchester Modernist Society HQ, 142 Chapel Street, Salford M3 6AF

Free

The Shrieking Violet fanzine and Manchester Modernist Society invite you to a seasonal gathering celebrating Manchester's media heritage through documentaries from the North West Film Archive.

There will also be some baked goods from recipes which have appeared in past issues of the Shrieking Violet fanzine — expect shortbread, sloe gin, grape vodka, tea and an edible, highly glittered Daily Express building.

Showing

People and Places Around Ordsall

Salford newsagent, amateur filmmaker and onetime newspaper delivery boy Ralph Brookes documented the changing face of the inner city area Ordsall in the 1960s and ‘70s, making over ninety home movies about the community around him, documenting everything from his home, family, birthdays and Christmas to mingling with the stars for an episode of Coronation Street which was filmed in the local park.

Here is the News

Colourful, jaunty, jazz-soundtracked film about how the Evening News is produced. Made in 1968 to celebrate the newspaper's centenary, the film shows the 'daily miracle' that is producing a newspaper, from visiting the various departments in the newspaper offices to distributing copies around the city to be read in suburban family homes.

News Story

A day in the life of the famous Guardian newspaper in 1960 (four years before it moved to London), from meeting the journalists in the various departments which put it together to printing with linotype and hot lead and its distribution around the country.

The event accompanies a media themed special of Manchester-based fanzine The Shrieking Violet which looks at various aspects of Manchester and the media — including Jack Hale of Manchester Modernist Society writing in praise of the innovative Daily Express building on Great Ancoats Street. The films in the North West film archive help give a sense not just of the labour and space intensive process that traditionally went into making newspapers, pre-digitisation, and the buildings in which they were made, but also illustrate the importance of newspapers in the city. The films, which each last around twenty minutes, provide fascinating insights into the time in which they were made: Here is the News is an optimistic look at the modernist city in the swinging sixties, whereas People and Places in Ordsall depicts the other side of life in the region, and the great changes Salford was undergoing at the time as part of slum clearance programmes.

Poster by Lauren Velvick.

www.manchestermodernistsociety.org/

Here's the edible Express Building — shortbread topped with readymade black icing from the Arndale Market, into which was embedded many silver balls. Sprinkled with black edible glitter.