Sheffield Film Co-op
The Film Co-op grew out of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Sheffield in the early 1970s. In 1972 the women’s group was approached by the Education Programmes producer at BBC Radio Sheffield and commissioned to make a series of programmes for schools about women.
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Not Just A Pretty Face was well received in schools but more than that it gave the group a chance to challenge the then current popular media views of “Women’s Lib, wimmin and bra burning.”
So when Sheffield Cablevision began broadcasting shortly afterwards and aired its desire to allow local people space to make their own programmes, four of us Christine Bellamy, Gill Booth, Barbara Fowkes and Jenny Woodley jumped at the chance.
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Beginning in 1973 we made two programmes for Cablevision
The first, Women and Children Last, examines the problems women with young children had when shopping or travelling around the city centre. The newly opened Castle Market with steps everywhere, the department stores with children’s clothes always on an upper floor, the route from the train station with its endless steps, all making life difficult for women with young children. As we four also had pre school age children, the second programme looked at the problems working women faced trying to find good childcare.
In 1975 with the Abortion Act finally passed into law we decided our next programme would be about a woman trying to obtain an abortion on the NHS. At which point the Cablevision manager started to get very nervous, muttering about the Home Office and his broadcasting licence and it quickly became clear that we would have difficulty making the programme we wanted to make.
As it happened the Cablevision manager did us a favour. A friend of ours, Barry Callaghan a lecturer in Film Production at the School of Art, part of Sheffield Polytechnic, suggested we make our programme on 16mm film instead and could use his department’s equipment. He pointed out that most schools, community centres and colleges had 16mm projectors so reaching our audience would not be a problem. After discussion we agreed that this was the best way to get our ideas made. Our only problem was that now, for the first time, we needed money. Again, following Barry’s advice, we applied to Yorkshire Arts Association for a grant to buy filmstock. When the application form arrived Question 1 was: Name of Organisation. Sheffield Film Co-operative was born...
​Over the following decade and a half a number of women worked with us for varying lengths of time: Moya Burns recorded the sound for several of our early films before going off to build a successful freelance career, Anne Foreman worked with us during the making of Jobs for the Girls and was able to include it on her showreel for her application to the National Film and Television School.
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Sheffield Film Co-op was one of a number of film and video workshops across the UK which worked collectively and with a political agenda. At the beginning of the 1980s everything changed when Channel 4 was granted a licence to operate with the remit to open up broadcasting to the regions and “to be innovative, to inspire change, to nurture talent and to offer a platform for alternative views.” This remit was largely addressed through it’s Independent Film and Video Department. Jenny Woodley was a key contributor to the setting up of The Franchised Workshops Declaration, developed by A.C.T.T. (Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians) this was a ground-breaking development in that it allowed workshop members to become union members and enabled workshop films to be broadcast on television . The Department provided equipment and funded workshops on an annual programme of work basis. Sheffield Film Co-op with it’s socialist feminist agenda was one of about 20 workshops across the UK and at this point we were in a position to pay ourselves wages and take on new worker members.
Bernadette Moloney and Chrissie Stansfield joined the Co-op in 1983 and later Maya Chowdhry, while in February 1985 Jenny took up a post at A.C.T.T. as a National Organiser with added responsibility for workshops working under the Workshops Declaration.
While budgets were higher and broadcast standards had to be met, one fundamental aspect of the workshops agreement was that we retained our own copyright and, largely, editorial control over the content of our work. So the aims and the themes continued: to give a voice to the concerns and opinions of ordinary women who were and still are hidden from both history and the present.
We made a number of films for broadcast which, thanks to retaining the copyright, we have also sold, hired and donated to a whole variety of festivals, educational settings, projects, and individuals. Alongside these, we made non broadcast films with women’s organisations and provided training opportunities for women new to the industry.
By the beginning of the 1990s the tide turned again and funding to subsidise non-commercial work became more difficult to obtain. We decided that we did not want to change Sheffield Film Co-op into a commercial venture and sacrifice its beliefs and aims and so we ceased working as a production company. However, the interest in our films has continued and many titles continue to be shown all over the world.