This blog is a bit of a love letter to my long-departed youth, and something I've been meaning to do for a few years now.

I moved to Manchester in 1987 to study for a BA (Hons) in American Studies. It was a great course, which included a year studying at Pennsylvania State University, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (possibly something to do with going as a slightly mature student instead of straight from school). The course, though, was not the most important thing in my life at that time. That was Manchester University Film Society, in its 42nd season when I arrived (I often think there must have been a certain Douglas Adams-based relevance to that fact) and it proved to be the single most important thing that could have happened to me.

I joined the society (colloquially referred to as FilmSoc or MUFS) during Freshers week, pretty much on the basis that they were showing Dougal and the Blue Cat later in the year. I also went along to the Cheese and Wine evening, as the committee were trying to encourage new volunteers.

I was living in the 'Toblerones' (Whitworth Park Halls of Residence) which was a few minutes' walk away from the Student Union, so I went along with one of my flatmates to see what it was all about. I imagined it would involve maybe checking tickets on the door or maybe helping with publicity (a childhood spent helping out with my parents' Theatre Group meant I was a dab hand at that kind of thing), but I also learned that all the reviews in the shiny annual members' booklet were written by society members and, again, I was quite taken with this idea. It also transpired that one of the committee members came from my home town!

The really interesting thing, though, was that FilmSoc ran itself as a proper cinema. There were 5 films a week,shown on 35mm (and occasionally 16mm) in the Main Debating Hall (MDH) of the union building, and the FilmSoc Office had its own projection box equipped with industry-standard projectors and Dolby surround sound. In a pre-multiplex era, this was better than some of the local Manchester cinemas and to top it all, the projectionists were all students, self-trained by more experienced projectionists in the second and final years. Strangely, for a "girly arts student", this was what really piqued my interest and my flatmate and I signed up as trainee projectionists there and then.

The committee and other volunteers were a (mostly) friendly bunch - a bit nerdy, and some had clearly sacrificed their degrees to the wellbeing of the society. It was a mix of scientists and arts undergrads, and I got to know most of them pretty well during my training. Some of us went out socially (if we went out at all - a lot of time was spent in the office and the Serpent Bar, which did cheap beer and rather good pizzas).

My training went on throughout the Autumn Term and (one notable episode - of which more here - not withstanding) I was let loose on a film unsupervised by early November (It was Otello, I seem to remember).

Early in the Spring Term, we held the legendary All Night Film Show, which was basically hiring four feature films, opening the MDH when all the bars closed on the Saturday night and showing films through the night until dawn - patrons could bring a sleeping bag if they wanted and refreshments and non-alcoholic drinks were available. It was usually fairly chaotic but good fun, if not a little tiring for the committee members who were showing the films, doing Front of House, etc.

It was around 3am when Paul, one of my friends on the committee, came into the office for a break. For reasons which were never quite clear (space, I think) the projection box door had been taken off its hinges and rested against the bookshelves in the office, which housed our library of film magazines (the BFI's Monthly Film Bulletin and Sight and Sound, which were later to merge into one publication). Paul leant against the door, took his John Lennon specs off and rubbed his tired eyes, and it was at this point that I suddenly thought, "Oh what lovely eyes he has!"

Up until this point, we had merely been friends and were actually trying to set each other up with two other FilmSoc volunteers who shall remain nameless. Our match-making skills were so monumentally awful that we gave up and decided to go out on a date with each other. 34 years, two kids and a paid-off mortgage later we were still together when he was struck down with a particularly aggressive cancer and died a few days after his 57th birthday.

So much of our lives were intertwined with FilmSoc - many of the committee members we knew then are still friends and godparents to our children. If I had not gone along to a cheese and wine evening all those years ago, my life would have been very different and while I miss him terrribly, I can take comfort from the friendships we made during that period which continue to this day.

While clearing the house after his death, I realised that we both had a full collection of the booklets, complete with the reviews and articles that we and others had written as callow youths. I'd been saying for ages that it would be nice to get them digitised and so that is what this blog is for.

We showed over 100 films a year, and each one was given a review comprising a short synopsis followed by the reviewer's opinion of it. Much of each year's list was popular recent films, along with art house favourites (Betty Blue was huge in 87/88, with its poster seemingly on every student's wall) and some genuine obscure little gems (Coming Up Roses, the first Welsh-language film to get a theatrical release). Some reviews were simple fact-giving pieces, whereas others went into more detail about film and the social, cultural atmosphere in which they were released. As years went by, we had some real film lovers, happy to share their knowledge and love of film with our members and the quality of the reviews improved as we honed our skills until we could say we were "award-winning" (more on that later, too).

In 1987/88, the contents of the booklet were my guide to films I'd not seen, and I can still remember watching some of them (when not projecting them) in the MDH.

Below is the programme for that first year of my involvement, with links to the original reviews. The booklet listed the films chronologically, with stills and logos cut and pasted into the mock-up before going to print (desktop publishing came into its own in this era, but originally, it was very much "send it all to the printer for them to sort out." These were sourced from the promotional materials provided by distributors and are reproduced here (badly) by me photographing the original booklet pages.

Some films have two reviews. There are several reasons for this. Sometimes two people submitted reviews for the same film, with differing viewpoints, so both were included for balance. Sometimes we just liked both reviewers and didn't want to let either of them down. And in a world of student unreliability, when we would sometimes struggle to get even one review for a particular film, we were just pathetically grateful that someone had bothered!

With over one hundred films each year for seven years, this is going to be a long project, but here's Season 42...