Snowball effect could put Mansfield on the cultural map with town’s first film festival

From a tiny ball of snow forged together by human hands, if left uninterrupted, it may eventually grow so vast it could take out an entire forest.

In this scenario, the tiny snowball might be a young Mansfield lad with a passion for storytelling, and the end point may be the town’s first film festival. Although that could still be a single point along the journey, with bigger things yet to come.

Jay Martin is a gifted young film-maker who champions the working classes and Mansfield in much of his work. And he is also the driving force behind next month’s Mansfield Town Film Festival, showing dozens of films from locally-based artists, as well as filmmakers from around the world.

The first Mansfield Town Film Festival is set to run over three days in July at the Palace Theatre and, according to the Mansfield Council blurb, will ‘bring together a stunning mix of filmmakers from across the country, internationally and the local area’ and allow guests to ‘enjoy three eclectic days of incredible stories – perfect for those with a love of film’.

Jay, aged 24, a former student at Mansfield’s The Brunts Academy, first made waves with his documentary REDt’BLUE, which had its official premiere at Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema last year.

It charts the rise of Mansfield’s Conservative MP Coun Ben Bradley as ‘the first blue brick in the red wall’ – and the impact Brexit had on changing the district’s political landscape, following a century of Labour dominance.

The film made such an impact with industry insiders that, prior to its release, Jay was also commissioned to produce a series of short documentaries for the BBC, looking at different aspects of the Covid pandemic – including a film which detailed the experiences of embattled staff at Sutton’s King’s Mill Hospital – which all aired in 2021.

However, rather than just showboating his own work, Jay used the premiere as a platform for other local filmmakers and got the ball rolling with a series of events which would lead, little more than a year later, to the festival which could help to put Mansfield on the cultural map.

Jay says: “The premiere was a sell-out with 250 people there, which included quite a few politicians. We showed a selection of films made by young directors from the area and at the end I stood up on the stage and told the politicians that over the past 13 years, they had consistently voted to cut arts funding and if that continued, all the films they had just seen would no longer be possible.”

A subsequent meeting with Coun Bradley, one of the politicians in attendance at the screening, led to REDt’BLUE being shown in Parliament and the first tenuous steps towards Mansfield’s first film festival.

Next, Jay approached the council, at the time bidding for Arts Council funding, which led to a pledge from Andy Abrahams, Mansfield mayor, that the festival would be green-lit if money became available.

Once given the go-ahead, the aim of the funding, to be paid over three years, is ‘to deliver creative and cultural activity’ in towns that have been under-served in the past – Mansfield has been named a ‘priority place’ for investment in the arts.

And Jay has also pledged to serve as festival director for the next three years.

He says: “The festival will bring together a stunning mix of filmmakers, with a strong focus on diverse, working-class talent from across the country and internationally.

“It will feature an array of genres, from short films and music videos to documentaries, animated films and international films. Three days of unique entertainment and fresh perspectives.

“There will also be an opening ceremony, workshops, masterclasses, question-and-answer sessions and an awards evening. It will be perfect for those with a love of film. It’s my ambition for it to become the largest cultural event in the town. Broadway is a brilliant cinema, with its links to the British Film Institute, but I hope this means people from Mansfield won’t have to travel to Nottingham or Sheffield to experience culture. They can have it right here.”

After Brunts, Jay studied film at Nottingham’s Confetti Institute.

Deciding against university, instead he worked full-time, which helped him put money aside for his own projects.

He says that his Brunts English teacher Barbara Roberts and Confetti tutor Luke Radford had the biggest influence on shaping his career to date.

“I’ve always loved storytelling in all of its forms,” says Jay. “Barbara nurtured that and told me about Confetti. I went along and thought, ‘wow’.

“Luke was the one who encouraged me to go above and beyond what was expected of me on the course.”

Next, Jay has ambitious plans to make a fiction piece from a script he wrote more than five years ago, which he plans to film in Mansfield, but admits it will be expensive.

Set in 1997, After Dark tells the story of a boy who enters a poetry competition in the hope the prize money will help his parents out of financial difficulties. However, unbeknown to the family, the young writer is suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia, with him increasing struggling to differentiate reality from illusion.

Speaking about the festival, Jay says: “I really hope it allows people to broaden their horizons – someone might attend and watch a French film and discover a love for foreign language cinema, or watch a film made by a gay director covering LGBTIQA+ themes – and that can only be a good thing. It’s about evolving the culture, it’s not about making millions of quid.”

Mansfield Town Film Festival 2023 will run from Friday-Sunday, July 14-16.

Ticket offer

Your Chad has teamed up with the festival to offer 25 per cent off the price of tickets. To find out how to take advantage of this fabulous offer, just pick up a copy of this week’s Chad, which is out today, June 28.