Alf Bower and The Yorkshire Communications Centre

Alf Bower at the Yorkshire Communication Centre, Bradford, 1980.

Alf Bower was appointed the Yorkshire Communications Centre (YCC) Manager in 1975, and for the next fifteen years under his stewardship, and technical expertise, the provision for aspiring film and video makers increased dramatically in the region. He was also a director of seven films, collaborator on many more, and a gifted dubbing engineer and sound technician. His Yorskhire Arrts Assocciation (YAA)-sponsored film The Party At Diamond Jacks is a testament to his solitary vision, and was a project he worked on for over a decade. In many respects Alf Bower is central to the story of the YAA, and because he was a core part of the region’s film and video culture for so many years, his career trajectory is worth studying at length.

His substantial contribution to the Yorkshire history has never rightfully been acknowledged, and this section aims to resolve that, using Alf as prism in which to view great change in moving production and infrastructure across Yorkshire, but also giving special focus to this unsung character and his little known works…

David Alfred (‘Alf ’) Bower was born in Barnsley and following school in 1970 he applied to the Sheffield City Polytechnic Pre-Diploma/Foundation Course in Fine Art, based at a Nether Edge college building. Barry Callaghan had just acquired the college’s first Bolex camera and he approached a class Bower was in with the offer of transferring to the full Fine Art Diploma at Psalter Lane with the promise of film-making as a minor option. Bower joined soon after. He struck a relationship with poet Dick Barker and the pair devised their first film script based on a poem by the French surrealist, Gérard de Nerval. El Deschidado is the thirty-minute result, a disjointed picture in surrealism. As a fiction piece it was an outlier (other students chose to shoot documentary), and its duration is long and ambitious in the context of contemporary student film. 16mm was a very costly medium for student budgets and so Bower - in a clear example of his technical ingenuity - devised a clever means of saving money by shooting at 16fps (silent speed), and providing it was projected at that rate, the playback effect was perceived normal. It saved considerable money. One constant on the shoot (and most Polytechnic productions, in fact) was Barry Callaghan. He helped the budding filmmakers out with technical guidance, and assisted Bower in the laborious process of editing at a college without the most efficient means of sound processing.[1] Bower recalls that, although he was enrolled at the Polytechnic as a Sculpture major, he didn’t do much artwork that year concentrating instead on El Deschidado: ‘I wasn’t assessed at any point. In those days there wasn’t much teaching, no essays.’[2] This testimony to the freeform modes of art school education is shared by many who were at the College in this period.

However, in his second year, Bower was required to make a graduation film. He had spent some time working with youth and Agit-prop theatre groups in Sheffield (The Little Theatre), at Bradford Playhouse and the IOU in Halifax. These collectives adopted early video cameras to document performance, and Bower was at hand to offer technical guidance. Interplay was a YAA sponsored community arts organisation based in Armley working with children. Their in-house theatre group InsideOutOverall took ‘participatory plays’ to children from deprived areas and initiated ‘holiday play schemes’ in the region,[3] and Bower saw an Interplay advertisement seeking (paid) technicians who could film these projects. He ended up filming the street play Brief Flame Against The Shadows set on an estate in Leeds, where he framed the performance as an allegory, ‘arguing that there was a parallel between the fall of Arthur and the regeneration and what was going on in Leeds at the time (or not)’.[4]

Bower also did some film work for another prominent Leeds theatre group, Red Ladder, and his work on IOU’s YAA sponsored production, An Example of Zeal. The film was proposed to the YAA as a witness to the ‘entire working process of an entire IOU piece’, with use of film to show ‘its audience aspects of the work that are not normally seen’. Elaborating on the potential of film, IOU declared that this project would ‘give them the opportunity of using cinematic grammar not possible in theatre, such as big close-up tracks and cranes, instant scene changes and intricate picture and sound editing’. The total proposed budget for the project was £3484 and was submitted to the YAA in 1978. Included in that cost was a wage provision for a film crew, and associated equipment and process costs. In the application IOU were keen to emphasise the collaborative nature of the project, in doing so they stated that there would be a ‘broadening of ideas between IOU and the film-makers on possible future ways of working’. They recruited two members of the YCC team (Alf Bower, Jim Pearse) and three members from the SIF collective (Moya Burns, Peter Care, and Russell Murray) to work on script and budget development. The group helped on the final film production which follows the costumed IOU performers from their base at the Mill in Mytholmroyd across the moors, in preparation of the final act at the World Theatre at Nancy, France (the film never reaches Europe). It is a surreal vision into the group’s process and uses live music (later dubbed at the YCC) and dance at its centre.

In many respects, the IOU experience represents a fine example of the notion of creative collaboration at the centre of YAA sponsored film and video in the 1970s. A fertile interrelationship between theatre, performance, dance, musicians and filmmakers emerges; one that brought together individuals from all disciplines, organisations, and even different parts of the region. Example of Zeal, is the last of the post-68 countercultural activities being supported by the YAA Film & TV panel, before the it pivots to a more ‘professional’ way of operating in the during the 1980s, the professionalism vs. counterculture dichotomy in plain sight.  Although Pearse said of the old application process ‘that loose kind of anarchic grant-aid model didn’t work anymore,’ IOU’s oeuvre was, in many respects, the distillation of the word anarchic. Despite being part of the formal application regime, their methods of cross-discipline, mixed media production resonates with the loose and ragged spirit of the alternative society; the ethos of arts-labs, and the avant-garde. It is telling that ongoing YAA support for IOU in the 1980s remained, but it was not provided by the Film & TV panel, rather it was subsumed into the theatre and performance funding board (traditionally the domain of the Arts Council of Great Britain backed disciplines). These early experiences were a key part of his formative training in the craft.

Poster For A Mysterious Devotion (1971)

During his time at Sheffield, Bower had also become friends with fellow student Andy Birtles. The pair worked on a screenplay called A Mysterious Devotion. This ambitious art film was shot at various coastal locations in Yorkshire on 16mm black and white stock using prime anamorphic lenses[5][NPP1]  with Bower taking the technical roles, and Birtles directing. Despite the fact both Bower and Birtles had since graduated from the Polytechnic, the equipment and film stock costs were paid for by the college. Meanwhile, the pair applied to the recently opened National Film School (NFS) in London using the filmed material from A Mysterious Devotion as portfolio to their application. Unusually, Bower and Birtles were interviewed together and while the former was accepted into the NFS, the latter was not. Bower used his first year at the NFS editing and completing A Mysterious Devotion with the assistance of experienced sound engineer, Tony Gurrin.[6] The film explores a death in a family in traumatic terms as Birtles’ direction captures both wide-open coastal space and oppressive, paranoid imagery of the family home, punched through with a religious symbolism. The finished result is a haunting piece - artful and mature for a student film. It shows the touch and promise of someone far more experienced, and inspired remarks like this from Polytechnic alumnus Derek Hayes who spoke of Bower in these terms: ‘I think he could, and should, have been a much bigger force within British film than he has been – he could have given Peter Greenaway a run for his money’.[7]

Bower was one of the first students at the newly established NFS, and the differences between his experiences at the London institution and Sheffield City Polytechnic were marked. Before opening, the school assembled an experienced group of film industry professionals to lead its teaching. Its founding director, Glasgow born Colin Young, was a key figure in the growth of the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television[8] before he moved to London. At the NFS he recruited luminaries like Roger Crittenden (who had worked as editor at the BBC since the 60s) and Gurrin. Alongside this experienced staff core, Bower recalls the array of equipment at his disposal was far more advanced than the resources available to Haywood and Callaghan in Sheffield. However, in a similar fashion to Psalter Lane, while staff were experienced and passionate, Bower still claims that the NFS ‘were professionals, but they didn’t know correct educational practice.’[9] This is a pattern reinforced by other testimonies of art schools post-1968, and encouraged a freeform platform to experiment with film and technique.

Uccello Print found in Alf’s archives.

His major graduation piece at the NFS was a film called Paolo (1975). Bower’s ally Dick Parker had written a lengthy poem about the Italian painter and mathematician Paolo Ucello, and he set about adapting it for film. Bower recruited NFS peers to help on the shoot, and the technician behind lighting and photography was Roger Deakins. The pair had worked on Deakins’ 1974 student film A Farmers Hunt and formed a strong working relationship. Roger Deakins went on to become one of the foremost cinematographers in the world, and his touch brings an elegant lightness to Bower’s Paolo. The film charts the protagonist over hill and moor (with locations including Redmires reservoir, Sheffield, and Cherhill, Wiltshire standing in for rural Italy) and one can see that this is no amateurish student production; real craftspeople with great potential are at work here. The film was shot over a six-week period in October 1973, but editing and post-production extended the project into 1975. It was made for a budget of £4600 (remarkable for a student film).[10] The film premiered at the NFT on the 500th anniversary of Uccello’s death,[11] and as an early glimpse into the working career of Bower, and such a significant cinematographer as Deakins, it remains an especially fascinating piece.

DIY poster put together by Alf and displayed at the National Film School.

Bower also collaborated with other future industry figures at the NFS such as sculptor Jeff Perks, screenwriter and director Malcolm Mowbray, actor Phillip McGough, and composer Donald Fraser. However, while many of those fellow students stayed in London and joined the metropolitan film industry, following graduation Bower returned to Sheffield. Richard Woolley (and others) suggested to me that ‘he was so true to his Yorkshire roots … if he’d stayed down in London to do further training, he could’ve become a big sound mixer in the industry’.[12]

In 1976 Bower managed to secure a visiting lecturer post at the Polytechnic working with Callaghan and Haywood, where he played a crucial part in helping the new wave of Sheffield graduates (Peter Care, Russell Murray, Jon Brooks, David Rea, Moya Burns) with their films and in the establishment of Sheffield Independent Film - SIF (as a waged member he was the only SIF founder allowed to set up a bank account for the group). Many of these people worked with Alf and the band, Caberte Voltaire on teh neo-noir Yorkshrie Arts funded classic, Johnny Yesno.

Alf, on set (far left) of the film, Johnny Yesno

At the Sheffield City Polytechnic, Bower saw a job description for a new post of ‘Technical Manager’ at the YCC in Bradford. Although he was only still relatively young, Bower had gained enough experience at the Polytechnic and the NFS, so Jim Pearse gave Bower the job. Alongside Pearse he was only the second waged member of staff at the YAA Film & TV section. Upon his arrival at Bradford in 1977, the Annual Report welcomed Bower into the organisation citing his experience, and how he ‘has already proved himself invaluable to the innumerable independent film-makers who constantly seek our help’.[13] Pearse had established the YCC infrastructure two years prior to this, and so it was Bower’s duty to continue the maintenance of the equipment base, and provide additional technical support to the growing list of users (both groups and individuals). Bower had specific expertise in sound for film, so he and Pearse decided to grow the focus in that area. Outside of YTV in Leeds there weren’t any professional dubbing theatres in the region, so the YCC began to acquire equipment to help meet that need.

Clipping from the Yorkshire Arts Report - 1977/78

By November 1978, the YCC was equipped so that there was ‘no element of the complex procedure of film soundtrack preparation that we cannot undertake’.[14] Beside routine dubbing operations, Bower also assisted on recording dialogue for theatre (Triple Action Theatre’s Faust was cut there in ‘79), and mixing classical music performance, jazz and ‘electronic music from Graph of Rotherham’. The late 70s were also a time when the Punk movement was emerging in Yorkshire, and Bower recorded demos for - soon to crossover into the mainstream - local bands like New Model Army and The Cult (previously Southern Death Cult). To further ensure the YCC offered a comprehensive service for sound, Bower also built an FX library (‘which amounted to thousands of cues’) for use in film and television, and made an impassioned plea for more sounds: ‘don’t hoard them … make them available to the film-making community!’ he wrote.[15] Bower’s salary as Technical Manager was paid for by the YAA, and he was supported by administrator Joy Godfrey, engineers Marcus Topham, Kris Szajdzicki, and film editors and sound technicians such as SIF members Moya Burns and David Rea. The wages of these part-time employees were subsidised by third party organisations like the Manpower Services Commission, and the Gulbenkian.

Clipping from the Arts Yorkshire magazine Report - November 1978

Specialising in sound at the YCC is at the basis of what Woolley calls the idea of developing a model for ‘satellite’ facilities in the region. In his 1984 summary of the film and video grant-aid landscape he writes that the model in Yorkshire the archetype by which the regional culture can survive and be sustainable. He cites the facilities base in the YCC that offers industry class sound and light equipment (and a ‘technician of infinite patience’ i.e. Bower), Sheffield (SIF) with video and 16mm resources, and Leeds University with editing experience. From here there are smaller access equipment workshops in the satellite cities like York, Bradford offering localised resources. All this, suggests Woolley, is a means of self-supporting projects with ‘all levels of finance’ experience and ambition to be accessed based on the sliding scale model. The YAA receives further (modest) credit as the usage of this equipment was rarely not in use ‘as the tiny budget the YCC receives from Yorkshire Arts an additional freelance technician is paid for to come and service it regularly and/or in emergencies.’ He even uses the word ‘Utopian’ to describe this scenario (albeit countered with a question mark). Woolley fundamentally believed that the only way in which the independent film-making sector in the regions could develop was by emulating the Yorkshire model.[16]

On top of his role at the YCC, an integral part of Bower’s job description was to support the Film & TV panel sponsored major productions. As he suggested to me, ‘a lot of people who were successful with grant-aid [for a film production] didn’t know the first thing about doing it.’[17] This resulted in Bower helping YAA projects to completion within the YCC itself (editing, sound mixing etc.) but also assisting on set during production. It is for this reason that Alf Bower’s name is listed on the end credits for a strikingly high percentage of film and video in the region produced between 1977-1991. His considerable technical ability and knowledge of the end-to-end film process made him a valued part of the region’s culture; here was an experienced individual at hand to nurture an often-inexperienced body of ambitious young film-makers to realise production at a professional level. To this end, Bower and Pearse also began a series of week-long classes in basic film technique at the YCC. Bower’s touch was across many YAA sponsored films, but he was also involved in the production of countless others, and  of all the protagonists interviewed for this project, Bower’s name resurfaces time and again. His commitment to this project is the embodiment of the evident collaboration running at the heart of the research period.

Bower’s other obligations to his position at the YCC included writing a quarterly column ‘Film in Yorkshire’. In its first instalment, Bower claimed that the region was ‘rapidly becoming known as a vital centre for independent film-making’, therefore the column would ‘inform about activities in the field, as well as equally important areas of distribution, exhibition and education’.[18] It is indicative of the growing reputation of film and video at the YAA that moving image was given a four page segment to display its newfound confidence. However, this was dealt a blow in 1978, as Bower’s column also notes a £500 theft of video equipment from the YCC. In many respects, this serves as a metaphor on the fragile state of Film & TV at the YAA - at once active, creative and prosperous, but also brittle and parlous. Despite this, the outward rhetoric of the YCC was one of professionalism and industry (helping to attract paying users), playing down the ramshackle nature of the YCC building, and emphasising its technical credentials

Alongside his formal YCC commitments, Bower retained a connection to his own creative endeavours. In 1978 he applied for YAA grant-aid to develop his ambitious science-fiction film, The Party At Diamond Jack’s. He would work on the film for over a decade. Bower’s initial idea was for a feature, and so began to write a 120-page full script based on a dystopian universe ‘in the grip of the Mattermaster. Where resistance to his oppression is co-ordinated by a network of Refugees whose mastermind is Diamond Jack.’[19]

Soon realising that the YAA didn’t have the funding resources to match his feature-length ambitions, Bower decided to shoot a pilot based on a script extract to be used as portfolio ‘to illustrate the professional competence of the producers’ and to ‘form the centrepiece of a package in raising finance for the feature’.[20] Sourcing an initial £3500 from the YAA to shoot the piece on 35mm Arri camera (a first use of 35mm by the YAA), Bower assembled a crew almost entirely comprised of SIF members to shoot in late 1978/79 (all of which were paid on a £50 per-day rate).

The finished pilot runs to 16 minutes and is an accomplished and otherworldly science-fiction featuring time-travel, flagellation, secret agents, a glamorous French Chateau (actually Braham Park House in Leeds) and a twisted Victoriana aesthetic that runs throughout. Following the decision to give Bower the money for …Diamond Jacks, the YAA Film Officers (at this time Richard Woolley and Jim Pearse in job share) formalised the ‘policy of offering first-time makers who wanted to make ambitious films the chance of producing a pilot to show the Panel…’ therefore providing the Panel with some way of ‘assessing a newcomer’s ability.’[21] Despite the significant work that went into producing …Diamond Jacks, the pilot never became a TV series or feature film, even though Bower spent the 1980s sourcing extra funds for completion, trying - and failing - to compete for additional money. The Panel ultimately felt that ‘the script was a very interesting one, but that it was unlikely to meet the criteria of strict commercial viability applied by existing central agencies.’[22] A Party At Diamond Jack’s remains a strange, unfished, relic in Bower’s career - one tinged by sadness and dreams deferred.

Flagellant Scene, The Party At Diamond Jacks

Nonetheless, in the new decade Bower was a fundamental constant in wider YAA developments. The successful expansion of SIF in Sheffield, and the usage numbers at the YCC led Pearse and the Panel to encourage the model elsewhere in the region. In 1980, a new organisation, York Film (YF), was formed by representatives of York Film Theatre and York Arts Centre to plan a range of activities embracing the production, exhibition and study film. Running parallel to these developments was the foundation of a group by three University graduates Janet Tovey, Jean Stewart and Sally Anderson geared toward production named York Independent Film (YIF). Bower was a key player in helping to support the formation of this umbrella network, and in Bradford he was put on secondment (alongside colleague Rod Long) to found the Bradford Film Group. By 1982/3 Bower and Pearse worked with another group in Leeds to help develop small equipment resources and exhibition activities, including a programme of black film screenings held in Leeds, jointly organised by both groups and news of which made the Yorkshire Post.[23] Extending this, Bower was also at the centre of a schedule of training workshops at the YCC and the umbrella groups. However, in comparison to the revenue funds allotted to SIF and York Film, the YAA expenditure on this type of activity remained minor.[24] Also at the start of the 1980s, Bower was heavily involved in the production of Richard Wooley’s BFI sponsored Brothers and Sisters. After consistent lobbying by Woolley to use a Yorkshire-based crew, Bower was employed as sound recordist on the film, but only after he was forced to display his credentials, ‘they [the BFI] had to see they knew what I was doing’.[25] For Bower, it was exciting to work on such a well-financed production, and was perhaps a reminder of how things could be.  

The arrival and impact of C4 in 1982 in Yorkshire has been well-documented elsewhere in the project, but for Bower and the YCC it delivered some much-needed finance toward a new editing bay (C4 also donated U-Matic decks to SIF for the same purpose). Bower contributed to numerousfilm and television works for the newly minted C4 Workshop groups, as the region’s production activity increased during the first half of the decade. Also, during this period, the tireless Bower was developing a project of his own.

Flyer for Like The Sea And Her Waves

Working closely with Rod Long, the pair devised a ‘very quiet little film’[26] based on the writer Eugène Guillevic. He and Long was awarded £1161 by the YAA in 1982/3 to go towards equipment costs for the film provisionally titled Euclideans. Speaking in the Yorkshire listings magazine, Bower described the film as ‘delivering a transformational experience that points towards the fullness of human life’.[27] Because Guillevic wrote about life in Brittany, France, and the film-makers couldn’t afford to shoot there, Bower and Long decided to use the Yorkshire landscape (moorland, woodland, and coastal regions) to illustrate Guillevic’s poetry. Speaking on the production, Bower was keen to emphasise the collaborative, integrated nature of the film: ‘It was very much a cooperative venture in the traditions of independent film-making, each crew member becoming involved in the problems of the day as well as their formal roles’.[28]

Euclideans received a completion grant from the YAA (£1533) in December 1983. The final work was renamed Like The Sea And Her Waves and premiered at the York Arts Centre (showing with Paolo) in April 1984. As with many of Bower’s own films it is a skilled, ambitious art film (with a beautifully composed choral score by Dirk Higgins) that only showed on a small regional circuit, and few have seen since. It was the last YAA film Bower would be directly involved in, although he continued to play an active and healthy role in Yorkshire’s moving image production culture.

In 1985 the YCC celebrated 10 years in existence, and the listings magazine Arts Yorkshire ran with a front-page feature ‘Positive Negatives: The Success of Yorkshire’s Independent film-makers’, showcasing a full-page photograph of Doncaster film-maker Peter Samson proudly inspecting film negatives. However, the article itself paints a different story. While the piece by Tony Layton initially champions the significant work achieved at the YCC in Bradford (‘a ten-fold increase in those producing small independent films in the region …’) he also writes of the need to ‘upgrade’ the YCC by moving base to Leeds at ‘4 Hall Place, Richmond Hill, Leeds in September [1985]’.[29]

Arts Yorkshire, August/September 1985

Ostensibly, given the faded interior architecture and amenities at the Bradford YCC  the time was ripe for a move to a new site. Bower himself stated in a YEP article from 1985 that ‘the premises in Bradford are too small, and are dilapidated’.[30] However, if one reads a little deeper there appears to be an underlying motive behind the relocation. While the YAA ‘allocated an initial £32000 to the move’ (actually £31250 [31]) toward equipment for ‘total 16mm film production, with improved sound mixing facilities’ the article also suggests that after the initial YAA equipment grant ‘it is planned that the centre becomes independent in the near future’.[32] This is the first public announcement that technical operations at the new YCC in Leeds would be left to become a client-facing, money-making enterprise, removed of the YAA safety blanket. The decision by the newly appointed YAA Director Jeffrey Sherwin[33] was first made sometime in 1983, as the organisation responded to a series of discords: the Arts Council report Glory of The Garden forced temporary evacuation of Glyde House as it underwent urgent renovations, and the organisation was required to conduct a ‘major review in spending priorities’.[34] In the face of these upheavals the assessment to sever the YCC from the formal infrastructure of the YAA was first declared in the Reports of 84/85 by Jim Pearse’s Film Officer successor, Paul Brookes. Writing in his column, he states rather gloomily that an ‘unsettling year’ marked by ‘original budget recommendations of the Panel not endorsed by the [YAA] Executive’ became further compounded by the ‘desperate’ search for new [YCC] premises only to be ‘disappointed in that one of the potential sites could not be secured’.[35] The final location was found at Hall Place, Richmond Hill, Leeds, at the site of an old Quaker School and former car seat cover manufacture, near the York Road.

Bower suggests he was given a ‘blank slate under the proviso that we’ll [the YAA] will buy it for you, and you are going to convert it to the best little media centre you can’.[36] £69041 went towards the final purchase and conversion of Hall Place, with additional subsidy arriving from the West Yorkshire MCC, BFI, and a significant contribution from Leeds City Council Urban Development Programme. The complex construction job entailed building sound-proofed walls, floating floors, designing a shooting studio, a new control room, rostrum room, video edit suite (purchased by a supplementary YAA grant) and improved sound mixing facilities. Bower was at the forefront of this entire design process. [37] One the one hand, the new YCC was a drastic improvement on what had gone before in Bradford; equipment was improved, the video facility was much better, and the modular layout of the shooting space allowed for far greater flexibility. However, as is emphatically declared in the 85/86 Annual Report, the new YCC was now a different entity altogether:

“The Centre was registered as an independent company with a charitable status under the new name of the Yorkshire Film and Video Centre, and as from April 1986 it began to a new future as a self-managed organisation.’[38]

Flyer (page 2)

The Yorkshire Film and Video Centre (YFVC) soft launched on September 7th 1985 with an open meeting designed to introduce the community to the new premises and to further the YAA’s ‘attempts at making ourselves more publicly accountable’.[39] Being interviewed by the Yorkshire Evening Post, Bower stated that ‘anyone interested can come along, use the equipment and receive training’.[40] While the need to move from the worn-down location at Bradford is clear, one can draw out further reasons for the relocation which paint a more complex picture.

The slow expansion of the strategy to support production bases in other parts of the region can go some way to explaining the excommunication of the YCC from core YAA business. In this context the Bradford site became an anomaly because it was directly run by the YAA, whereas the other places (especially SIF) were only part-funded by the YAA and heavily reliant on membership fees. Therefore, an increasing pressure boiled over within the YAA to remove the YCC from its base infrastructure. In Pearse’s words, ‘they were heading toward privatisation…’.[41]

1986 also witnessed the abolition of the Metropolitan County Council’s that provided further turbulence across the YAA, specifically with regard funding. The major casualty of these straitened budgets in Film & TV was the provision for production grants. The semantics surrounding video production in the Annual Reports, Panel Minutes, and Arts Yorkshire magazine changed during this period, as no longer video was a ‘time-consuming’ or inferior quality medium but one deemed essential to meet the changing needs of the community and economic situation. Speaking about the YFVC opening, Film Officer Brookes emphasised the swing in emphasis to video. He suggested the centre would support the increase in demand for video making and appointed a ‘part-time video worker’ to handle this growth. Brookes goes on to argue that ‘video is cheaper …’ than higher-end film production and there is a ‘definite interest from groups who want a finished product reasonably quickly’.[42] Despite the increased rhetoric of community video in the region, Bower (like Pearse also) was sceptical of the medium for production, and he continued to be the champion for film. Nonetheless, activity at the late 1980s YFVC was characterised by the open access nature of community video work and is discussed in more detail across this project.

Bower ran the YFVC with deputy manager Mike Holder from December 1985 and one of the core policies they introduced was based on the sliding scale model first established at the YCC. Users of the centre had to become members in order to use the equipment with rates based on an Associate Membership scheme (between £1 and £5 per use), Full Membership (between £7.50 and £15 per annum), and Corporate membership (between £30 and £50 per annum). Local groups to be YFVC corporate members included established collectives like SIF, Steelbank, Sheffield Film Co-op, Leeds Animation Workshop, alongside smaller community groups such as Yorkshire Deaf Video Project, Woodhouse Recording Company, and Friends of Dance North.[43] Much like the approach at the YCC, Bower offered concessionary hire rates, training workshops and special equipment for groups and individuals from underrepresented or mispresented parts of the community.

Easy Money (Raza Mallal, 1989)

One YAA film Bower is especially proud to have worked on while Manager at YFVC was Raza Mallal’s Easy Money (1988). Awarded £5000[44] by the YAA, Leeds-based Mallal devised a film with the tagline: ‘Crime, Fraud, Deception and Survival in Today’s Multi-ethnic Society’.[45] Bower assisted on the film, specifically with the lighting arrangement, while teaching Mallal the fundamentals of film technology. Inspired by this process, Bower began to develop teaching materials and built up the educational and training aspects on offer at the YFVC. However, the institution was suffering financially and it was decided that Bower would move on, he told me: ‘in the spirit of the culture at the time, as first one in I was first one out!’[46]

Alf Bower spent the rest of the 1990s in various HE institutions teaching part-time film production courses at Salford Polytechnic, and The University of Huddersfield, before joining Barnsley College on a full-time basis overseeing the Drama BTEC. He was always working, collaborating, helping. One title, DON’T RUBBISH THE INNER CITY is rereference elsewhere on this website. He retired from education in the late-2000s. Perhaps Bower’s late-career swing into education is summed up by an epitaph, in his own words, that can be echoed by many in this history:

‘You learn and then you teach ’[47]

Alf on stage (centre) at the Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds after a screening of A MYsterious Devotion in 2018.

ALF BOWER 2025

David ‘Alf’ Bower passed away in Summer 2021. Little known, but still influential, amongs those in the region Alf was at the forefront of making, teaching and sharing film and sound to many hundreds of people in 70s-90s in Yorkshire. People who first worked with him went on to Hollywood, London broadcast TV and beyond. His funeral, many of those came out to celebrate his life. Working wth his family I hope to carry on that flame and have been slowly raising funds to digitise tapes, films, and make his work better known. 2025 will see at least two audio releases of 1/4” audio I have found and transferred - wild mysterious sonics from Psalter Lane, Sheffield. Rebooted. The Alf story continues…

Alf in frame from a newly digitised 8mm piece. Unknown title.

FOOTNOTES

[1] In Alf Bower’s words: “Editing it was very laborious. We didn’t have a pic sync. So we had a synchroniser but no heads, didn’t play sound and we had a picture head. So I actually laid the soundtracks down the corridors, working it out mathematically. We did this late at night in the cutting room (which was essentially the projection room for a lecture theatre).” From Interview, 2018

[2] Bower Interview, 2018

[3] Interplay poster, Unpublished. From Alf

[4] Bower Interview, 2018

[5] It was highly unusual to shoot in cinemascope as it required the same lenses to project and playback, and it was rare for many exhibition spaces to have this facility.

[6] In the late 60s, Gurrin established the De Lane Lea Sound Centre in Dean Street, Soho, which focused on film and television sound before joing the NFS as one of its head of department. His speciality was in sound design and no doubt he influenced Bower’s way of working. Accessed - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/21/tony-gurrin-obituary

[7] Derek Hayes / Personal Comms. Email.

[8] UCLA Alumni to have studied under Young include Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Schrader, John Milius, Haskell Wexler, Barry Levinson and Lawrence Kasdan

[9] Bower Interview 2018

[10] Directory of Independent Cinema, p. 8

[11] Reel Practices.

[12] Richard Woolley Interview

[13] YAA Report 77/78

[14] Arts Yorkshire - Sound At The Centre - Bower - 1979 November

[15] Arts Yorkshire - November 1978 

[18] Arts Yorkshire - November 1978

[19] Yorkshire Arts, Reel Practice

[20] Diamond Jacks Application form. Unpublished. 1978

[21] Yorkshire Arts Assocation. report 80/81

[22] Minutes of the Film Production AWG Meeting on 6th March 1978, Yorkshire Television Centre, Leeds

[23] Yorkshire Arts Association, Reports 82/3

[24] An example from the 82/83 accounts: SIF received £9900, York Film £8500 while Leeds Film Group given £350, and Bradford £250. From YAA Reports.

[25] Alf Interview, 2018

[26] Alf Interview, 2018

[27] Arts Yorkshire. May 1984.

[28] Ibid

[29] Arts Yorks - Aug/Sep 1985 p.16

[30] ‘Film Centre rolls to a new home’ YEP Monday July 29 1985

[31] Report 1985/6

[32] Arts Yorks - Aug/Sep 1985 p.16

[33] Sherwin lasted less a year before being replaced by Robin Guthrie.

[34] Chairman’s report 83/4 - p.1

[35] Chairman’s report 83/4 - p.1

[36] Alf Interview

[37] Arts Yorks - Aug/Sep 1985 p.16

[38] Yorkshire Arts Association Report 85/86, p.4

[39] Report 85/86, p.4

[40] YEP article.

[41] Jim Pearse Interview - 2018

[42] Aug/Sep Arts Yorkshire

[43] YFVC Hall Place Corporate Flyer. Unpublished

[44] Report 88/89. P.13

[45] Easy Money poster. Unpublished.

[46] Alf Interview

[47] Alf Interview