What a Film Festival Does to a City
A fight broke out on the station platform, one man versus himself, and it got messy. Blood wasn’t spilt, but his can was, and beyond the frantic flailing at invisible enemies I could see across the platform, in that grey half light on the tarmac, the Vue cinema where I’ve spent hours hiding from the day. For a moment I thought about sacking this off, heading there instead, slipping into an empty screen for a mid afternoon showing like I often do, letting the day pass without friction.
But the chaos subsided, negotiations taking place on a bench, and there was no train to be caught by the subdued cider warrior. I got on mine.
The journey became a quiet drift between distraction and low level dread, scrolling greenhouses on my phone, half thinking about preparedness, half about escape. War, ra
ge, overpriced garden furniture, all of it sitting there in the same scroll, and it felt like a strange moment to be heading into something as deliberately communal as a film festival when everything else seemed to be pulling apart.
I met the artist in the city and we walked, Manchester maybe louder than I sometimes remember and quicker, a place that no longer waits for anyone’s version of it. We talked about letting go of that idea of my Manchester, the one shaped by memory and repetition, and trying instead to meet what is actually here now, which is a city that moves whether you keep up or not.