Film collecting was outlawed, now fans say it's making a comeback

Collectors of cinema reels and other film spools are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their annual convention. The first British Film Collectors Convention (BFCC) was held in 1976, with the next event taking place in Oxted, Surrey on Saturday. Mark Stuckey from charitable trust Film is Fabulous said the hobby was once outlawed, but is now growing in popularity. "If we go back just a couple of decades or so, a private collector owning particularly a 35mm print would have been in prison, because technically that print was not owned by him," he told the BBC. "If he had acquired it, he had technically stolen it and therefore a lot of collectors for many years went underground," said the 70-year-old from Cromer, Norfolk. "The result was that early silent film, which was part of our social history, has gone forever." The BFCC allows collectors to sell or trade films, ranging from 35mm to Super 8 gauges, and to view projected cinema. Convention organiser John Clancy said it "looked like the convention was killed" by the Covid-19 pandemic. "We brought it back for one event in 2023... I started to think that film was fashionable once more," he told the BBC. Film is Fabulous was set up af