The Illusion of Depth

When I was doing my music A-Level (about 150 years ago, give or take) I had one particular professor who was, shall we say, flexible with her facts. I don't doubt her qualifications, and I'm sure she was eminently capable in her chosen field, but I came to realise that nothing she said to us in class was reliably accurate. Sitting through her lectures became something of a "spot-the-mistake" game, which isn't really meant to be the purpose of a music A-Level. We were told, for example, that Mozart was born in 1754 (no) and that Bach's Brandenburg #4 featured trumpets (not so much). On and on it went; class after class, mistake after mistake. It was my own fault, I suppose; I should really have spotted the red flag the first day I met her, when she spoke to me about Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings , then asked me if I could tell her more about the "tenor horn". I found myself explaining to my future lecturer that the "...

It may have quite understandably escaped your notice (what with all the mishigas going on around us) but 2025 marked the tenth anniversary of these film nights at the Victoria Park Baptist Church. In truth, there have been a few interruptions here and there. We took a brief hiatus for the occasional global pandemic, and then there was the time when the Church roof collapsed...  ...but even allowing for all that, we've covered a lot of territory since 2015. Now, as we prepare to enter our second decade, I hope you will indulge me if I permit myself a moment of quiet reflection. What I earnestly hope is obvious by now is that these film nights are not primarily about the films. Yes, I screen movies (and I fully intend to screen many more) and I hope everyone enjoys the titles I select. Even the bad films can be important for anthropological reasons... But this isn't just a film club , and my purpose here is not merely to stick a film in the slot, press "play" and sit do...