ABSTRACT
Mark Cosgrove’s professional life in independent cinemas – first at Plymouth Arts Centre then Cornerhouse in Manchester and now Watershed in Bristol – has brought him close to audiences’ responses to films, and also to their experiences before, during, and after the cinema screening of a film. He believes there is no one way to receive a film: each individual brings their own life journey to a screening. However, the collective experience of the venue – the place of cinema – creates a unique context where a film and the various lived experiences of the audience can connect in powerful and meaningful ways. That resonance between film, venue, and audience evolved further for him when taking Carl Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (LA PASSION DE JEANNE DÁRC, 1928) on tour with a newly commissioned score. Each place – venue or festival context – brought fresh meanings to the extraordinary images filmed nearly 90 years earlier.
