iLoveFilm.com

I love film. I'm not promoting a new way of approaching film rental, I'm simply stating a fact. I love film. One of my new freelance enterprises is through a company called FILMCLUB (www.filmclub.org) and if you have never heard of them then you must go and see what they are all about. Funded by the Department of Education, it works tirelessly to set up film clubs in schools across the nation. Why? Well, simply put (and I whole-heartedly agree with them) they believe that providing children with access to a wide range of films is one of the most mind-opening, knowledge-enhancing, tolerance-building things that we can do.

Somebody asked me that impossible-to-answer question today: what is your favourite film? Well, if you will imagine for a moment that I have about 10,000 children, it's a little like asking me which one is my favourite. First of all, it changes all the time. I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers but pushed to decide on just one? Fargo. No, The Big Lebowski. Wait, no, I meant, No Country for Old Men. You see? I can't answer that. And, if I left it at the Coen Brothers, I'd be lying. That's my "cool" answer. Don't get me wrong - I HEART the Coen Brothers but my less cool (and just as honest) answer would have to be Top Gun. I know that's not cool or hip or trendy or even slightly respectable but it's more to do with the associations that I attach to the film.

I remember watching Top Gun for the first time when I was about ten. I'd just been allowed to have a TV in my own room (ah, the luxury!) and it was on waaaaaay past my bed time. I had to turn the volume right down because I didn't want my parents to wake up, so I had to sit about three inches away from the screen trying to hear everything. I remember laughing at Goose's wicked one-liners, and 'fan-gurling' over Tom Cruise (that was before I knew any better) and thinking this was possibly, just about the best film I'd ever secretly seen. For the first sixty minutes, time stopped, the world ceased to turn and absolutely nothing else occurred beyond the four walls of my bedroom.

Then (excuse the spoiler) Goose died.

I think that was the first time in my life that I'd been emotionally torn apart by a film. From the moment the opening credits had rolled and Maverick had been told that if he didn't behave he'd, "be flying a plane full of rubber dog sh*t from Hong Kong" I had fallen in love with Goose. I think it was the first film I'd seen where they didn't all live. I had a Dorothy moment: I suddenly realised I wasn't in Disney anymore. I was heartbroken. I cried and cried and cried and then cried some more. I remember feeling real grief for about two days. It haunted me. Then my mum took me to see Philadelphia and I realised I wasn't going to last long in the cinematic cut-throat, heart-wrenching world unless I manned up a bit.

Since then favourite films have come and gone. In the early days, Labyrinth and The Princess Bride stood on a pedestal way to high for any other film to get near. Later, Teen Wolf and Major League took over and now? Well, that brings us back to where I started.

The point I wanted to make is the importance of films, all films in our lives. I was lucky enough to have a father who was passionate about films and who took me to the cinema and exposed me to films that I otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to see. I vividly remember him taking five minutes in the car park after watching a film at the movie theatre. He would write the title of the film in his diary and give it a certain amount of stars out of five depending on how good he thought it was. We would discuss what we liked and didn't like about it and then we would negotiate a star rating between us. What's even better is that I would bet both my legs that he's still got all those diaries. I'd love to go through them one day and see what we decided for various films. I'm pretty sure that my early choices (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure or Mr. Nanny) didn't rate very highly on my Dad's scale. Now though, he steals all my DVDs and calls me after each one to dissect it.

And, at the heart of it, that's what FILMCLUB is all about. Even if kids don't have dads to take them to the cinema and get them talking about it afterwards and even if kids watch films they don't like, or that make them sad, FILMCLUB provides them with an opportunity to access those films. They can still go home and tell their parents all about it and that's a conversation that they otherwise wouldn't have with their parents. It's an opportunity for them to have opinions that aren't coloured by curriculums or exams or anything else. Films open their eyes to worlds, cultures and experiences that they may have only seen in their hazy dreams. Films make kids cry. But they also make them smile and laugh and stare in wonder at what the world has to offer us.

If you are a parent, or a teacher or an aunt or you simply know any kids...ask them if their school runs a FILMCLUB. If they don't direct them to the website www.filmclub.org or tell them to go to school and demand that their teachers go to the website. I promise you, they'll never look back.