Keep in contact with your film friends and make new ones

[Lee Mannering]

As our interest in all about entertaining either ourselves, family or friends it's great that some countries are now allowing visitors for a hug and to watch a film. Yay!

We love having film nights on 8, 9.5, 16mm and a little bit of 17.5 with a few faces and we swap around usually sharing the load visiting outside for other screenings.

This week as we see the covid ease we will be having a few visitors for shows and look forward to catching up although I have banned the Covid word from screenings. Think we have all had enough of that!

So, hopefully we can make a extra effort to check up on our film friends and also make new ones.

Carry on projecting as I think we have started to see the light!

[Melvin England]

"Keep in contact with your film friends and make new ones."

I think today we are in an even greater position to "keep contact with film friends and make new ones" than even when super 8 was in its mass appeal hey day.

The existence of this very forum is critical to this. In the 1970's/80's I could not have dreamed that eventually I would be talking "shop" to collectors worldwide. It's always great to know what is going on in the world of super 8/16mm in, for example, the USA with regular contributions from our colleagues in New York, Florida, California and others. OR to learn that there is a 2x 400' version of a title released in Germany that was only 1x 400' in the UK. Further afield we have contributions from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand etc. What a healthy state we are in to be fortunate enough to be able to do this!

Further more, we go from strength to strength........ or rather BLACKPOOL goes from strength to strength. As the word is spread about its reputation, we are now at a point where we are actually getting to MEET some of our overseas colleagues in person as they make the journey across the pond, or cross the North Sea/English Channel (sorry Dominique....La Manche).

I think the point of my contribution to this topic is really to raise a glass to both The Forum and Blackpool (with a respectful salute to Wildwood and the up and coming Florida convention) and say "Long may they continue!"

[Lincoln Thorn]

I cherish all the friendships I’ve made here since I started collecting S8mm/16mm film!

It’s been a joy to get to know you all and look forward to many more years of it.