OUFF: Privileged 40th Anniversary

PRIVILEGED: 40 YEARS LATER

The OUFF Head of Events, Monica, had the wonderful idea to host a screening and reunion of the film Privileged (1982) for which OUFF was founded. The crew, including Mike Hoffman, Andy Paterson, and Rick Stevenson, founded the society (then the Oxford Film Foundation) to get £50 towards the film. Many of the team became successful in the film industry following the project  – most notably Hugh Grant. 

Our Senior Tutor, Neil Mendoza, had already put us in contact with Mike and Andy for their advice with Breakwater. They were both thrilled by the idea and assisted us with contacting the other alumni. I mostly handled venues – we knew we wanted to host it at The Ultimate Picture Palace. The venue hire was our entire budget and myself and the Exec team planned the marketing and ticket prices to earn back as much of this fee as we could (it was the society's entire bank account). 

The rest of the committee assisted Mike and Andy with contacting the alumni. They were multiple crew members for which Mike and Andy did not have a contact – they would tell us their college and we would contact the Alumni Manager for that college. They were very keen to get Hugh Grant, which ultimately did not happen. We initially had Mark Williams as a yes (best known for Mr Weasley in Harry Potter), but he cancelled the day before. The event excited many of the colleges and they were keen to help.

Organising a dinner for the committee and alumni was the next biggest challenge. Due to the cost of our venue, we did not have the budget to book a dinner in a college hall (although we contacted many). Finally I decided on JoJo's – the owner Jonathan is a friend of OUFF's and we host all our socials there – which is across the street from the cinema. The alumni fortunately thought a casual pizza dinner was perfect. Some were displeased that they had to pay for their dinner (which was only £10-15/person), but there was no other way around it for the society. Mike, Andy, and Neil also chipped in a bit for the dinner. 

As expected, the event sold out. We were unable to sell as many alumni tickets as we had hoped (which were more expensive). The Privileged cast and crew attended for free, so we were hoping to cover their cost by charging other alumni more. Many colleges supported us by circulating the event in their alumni newsletter. We also only charged OUFF members £5 per ticket (membership is also £5) because it was very important to me that events remain accessible to all. We lost around £100 but I think this is pretty good considering how expensive the whole event was / how poor the society is. The screening went wonderfully (Jemima and Andy had managed this) and the Privileged team ran the Q&A themselves. I got to give a little speech and introduce myself at the start which was exciting. We also had a drinks reception at the end so students could mingle with the filmmakers. We negotiated to get this wine as a free donation from Keble College. 

The dinner was a great opportunity to chat to the filmmakers in more depth. I spoke mostly to Rick Stevenson, who is coincidentally also from Seattle (he managed to guess my high school in one guess) and Mike's partner, Sarah. We had a wonderful conversation about being a woman in the film industry, something that was particularly pertinent as our whole committee is female. Hopefully we can continue to nurture these relationships.