Magic Lantern Film Club’s “Wish You Were Here” – 11 July 2015, Sheffield

This post is about a film released 28 years ago in 1987 (just in case you can’t count) but don’t worry this hasn’t gone out-of-date on you, as sometimes its about how you see a film, in this case the forgotten but BAFTA winning “Wish You Were Here” not when you see it.

And how you view a film (or how on this occasion my boyfriend and I viewed the film) was thanks to the Sheffield based Magic Lantern Film Club, a community pop-up cinema who love to make an event out of showing great films in great locations.

Last night’s event by the canal side in Sheffield (we couldn’t work out how to get there until a kind man let us walk through his private property and we crawled under the screen – luckily the film hadn’t started yet) involved an ice-cream van, bubble blowing, free fish finger rolls and sticks of rock, wooden seats and saucy postcards.

The film itself offered a strong but naive female role model played by 17 year old new comer and BAFTA nominee Emily Lloyd, reflected the desire of everyone just to be loved and if it was being sold to a film company would be as the comedy of “Rita, Sue and Bob too” set in the 1950s meets other Film4 favourite “Vera Drake”.

The only part of the film I struggled with was the thought (and this is a very 90s reference) of a teenage girl losing her virginity to Beckett from “Bugs” but if you can cope with that and the opening and closing tap dancing you’ll in for a charming but neglecting cinematic treat.

The three ladies who run the film club’s passion for the film came through in their introduction and watching the film and guessing at their ages I expect they discovered it as teenagers and immediately desired to be the lead Lynda, but if you were them wouldn’t you be showing films you are passionate about to.

The film club might not always show films everyone is interested in (a forthcoming film about table tennis combined with a table tennis tournament isn’t for me) but with cinema prices going up, cinema food prices going up even quicker and the whole cinema experience becoming to main stream and promotion driven, Magic Lantern Film Club offers an opportunity to see film differently and explore Sheffield at the same time.

And whether you charge your battery and go and sit by a canal and watch it, or just stay home curled up on your sofa, I recommend fans of British cinema everywhere to spend 88 minutes of their lives getting to know Lynda.

And last but not least, “Up your bum!”