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The White Bus Ltd is delighted to have once again been commissioned by Southend Borough Council to organise and present the Southend Film Festival.
We are Southend based, with our roots firmly planted in the local community. We specialise in film and video production, distribution and exhibition. We are also heavily involved in education, running courses on subjects as varied as camera lighting, editing and scriptwriting.
To the local film going public we are perhaps best known for our shows at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff. Every six to eight weeks, on a Sunday evening, we turn the main auditorium into a cinema and show a feature film supported by vintage adverts or a short film. Recent shows have included diverse films such as A Single Man, Wild Target and Winter’s Bone and, for our Christmas show, the 1947 classic It Happened on Fifth Avenue. Guests have joined us to introduce their films.
We are based at TAP, a temporary arts centre in an old Victorian water works, where we have our office and Cinema. The Cinema is available for private hire for previews, birthday parties, etc. Our Archive is home to over 2,000 reels of 16mm film, comprising over 250 British feature films, an extensive collection of material by iconic director Lindsay Anderson (whose drama documentary The White Bus inspired our company name) and hundreds of short films, documentaries and cartoons. Selections from the Archive are shown every Wednesday evening from 7pm. These are public shows, and admission is free, so please do join us! The films in the Archive are also available for private viewing in the Cinema.
We have been delighted to promote an annual short film competition through the Film Festival. Aimed at local filmmakers, this has strengthened our already strong ties with the Southend-based media colleges. This has also cemented our links with Southend’s twin town, the Polish resort of Sopot, which also holds an annual film festival. Selections from Southend are screened at Sopot, and we are pleased to showcase work from Sopot at our festival.
Do please get in touch if you would like to know more about our activities. 
Paul Cotgrove
Co-Director: The White Bus Ltd
Festival Director: Southend Film Festival
Contact the team at The White Bus here
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