The2019 Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival began yesterday and continues to the fourteenth. As I said a few days ago, I’m a bit low that I didn’t contribute to it this year. They are a wonderful way to get film into the community, and of showing films’s relationship to culture at street level. I keep thinking about writing something lengthy about such festivals and other forms of filmic love like cinephilia and fandom, but predictably I haven’t got anything onto paper yet. It seems to me that, in the way they are planned and organised by a local society – from the ground up, so to speak – means they have a unique link with a particular urban community,, and perhaps we can read something about it’s character in the films it’s members chose to screen. I reckon that might be interesting to explore to some depth. What could opting to screen a certain film at a certain time tell us about the attitudes and outlook within a given community? Could choosing to screen, say, Wonderwoman (to pick a title from this year’s CWFFF list) imply certain opinions on gender, say? Or is it silly to try to psychoanalyse an entire metropolitan borough? Either way, if you’re in South-East London, please check out some of the screenings.