On sunday 20th December 1998 at the 333 Club in Old street, Hoxton, London the constituent film clubs of the Volcano Film Festival collaborated on a fundraising show called 'Santa Volcana' for the next year's festival.
Volcano lasted 4 years from 1996-1999 and was a unique co-ordination of up to twelve different independent film clubs to put their shows on during the space of a single week.
As well as the film club events, special one off events, talks and cross-club screenings were also organised.
The Volcano festival ended each year with a final screening/party in which every club that had participated was alotted a segment of the evening to do with as they pleased. This often led to chaos as different performers, filmmakers, artists and organisers tried to work out what they were supposed to be doing and where and when they were supposed to be doing it.
The footage here, while not of one of the end-of-festival parties, was arranged along the same lines and was similarly chaotic. Despite this the show was packed to capacity and was excellently received by an enthusiastic audience. It raised enough money for the Festival to go for another year before disbanding.
Many of the film clubs that comprised Volcano are still around and putting on shows. The rundown of film clubs represented by the 1998 festival is as follows: The Halloween society, OMSK, Reprojection, Exploding Cinema, Shaolin, Renegade Arts, My Eyes My Eyes, Blink (Backspace), Rocketfish, Cine Club Chickens, Zipper and Deutchland Underground.
As long as the London underground film club scene is still going the possibility of another Volcano-style festival is always there.
I'm amazed this hasn't been taken down by youtube yet
golfthewlis 2 years ago