Christoph Warrack, a young Catholic film maker, explains why he has felt called to run a special cinema project for the homeless at St Patrick’s Church in Soho.

I always had a strong Catholic faith but I went away from it when I was a student. Even so I was very idealistic and still based my ideas on Christian ideals. Like many people at that stage I smoked a lot of marijuana, got interested in Buddhism and after university went off to India on a kind of spiritual quest. I was dissatisfied with the Western bias of the philosophy so I studied Indian classical music and philosophy, and travelled to many of the significant spiritual sites of South Asia. Through my travels and experiences I realised the universal and not simply Western truth of Christianity, and decided to return and become a writer in my native culture.

When I moved to the Soho area around 2002 St Patrick’s was my local church so I automatically got involved with the life there. I have found being part of a parish is a great way to get into a community in London and meet a whole lot of people you normally wouldn’t meet. At the time Fr Alex, the parish priest, had set up a project called Open House and I decided to volunteer. This is an upmarket soup kitchen which reaches out to the homeless of Soho. I was a bit nervous at first as I had never really engaged with this side of life, although I had lived in India, but homelessness is different here and is rather swept under the carpet. I found that once one gets over the normal resistance there are a lot of fantastic characters who come and you are exposed to a very rich side of life, although it is not always easy. About 60-80 people a week come to Open House. The food is fantastic as the cooks tend to be French and Belgian and wives of ambassadors who prepare the meals on a rota. So you get things like coq au vin and lovely puddings. At the beginning and the end of the meal we have a time of prayer and end up with some songs. The emphasis is to foster a sense of community among the people who come. About a third of these would be regulars whom I would recognise, and others rotate.

Homeless can feel cut off!

A few years ago, it occurred to the volunteers that perhaps we should be doing other things to help improve people’s quality of life. We thought about organizing day trips and then someone mentioned film. I pounced on this as I am a film maker myself. At St Patrick’s they had a digital projector which made it easy to organise. All we had to do was set up a couple of speakers, paint the big wall at the end white, and put up blinds on the windows. People often don’t realise how cut off homeless people can get just from normal things that we take for granted, and going to the movies is one of those things. Thus it was in autumn 2005 that we started the film club for the homeless. The first ones we showed were overtly religious films, like “The Passion of the Christ” and we had a “God in Hollywood” season. As time went on, however, we felt it perhaps wasn’t the best thing just to show overtly religious films, but more ones with a message that related to every day life. We showed films like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “The Shawshank Redemption” and “the Blues Brothers”. I always remember when we showed the “Blues Brothers” one evening before Christmas. It’s a very funny film and I remember the roars of laughter taking the roof off the place. It was great to see the homeless guests being able to have their minds taken off their troubles for a short while.

Although I am not against religious films, I actually think it is better to experience religion directly through people and personal contact rather than through a film. About 15-20 people usually come, more in the winter when it’s cold – then it’s about 30-40. We also started to invite guest speakers to talk before the film. My uncle is Hugh Hudson, who directed Chariots of Fire, and we had him come and speak. It was a very moving screening and a lot of people were in tears. Piers Paul Read, the Catholic novelist came too, and he introduced the film “Alive” which was based on the book he wrote about a true story of an air crash in the Andes and how the survivors coped. We have also shown contemporary films like “Last Resort” by Pawel Pawlikowski, about a Russian immigrant getting caught in the immigration system in Margate. Sometimes as an audience people can get really engaged with the film and they will start talking or reacting to it while it is running rather than waiting to the end to express their views. People come to hear about the club usually through word of mouth, but we also do advertise in the Pavement, a magazine for the homeless. We provide tea and coffee and toast, but people were often coming in hungry, so we arranged for EAT, a local sandwich bar, to give us whatever they don’t sell at the end of the day to give out.

A room full of people laughing

There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching a film with a room full of people laughing, crying and eating together and buzzing with what they have seen. My involvement has also got me inspired to find out more about homelessness and reasons behind it, and I have become involved in various homeless forums, and in campaigning to bring the issue to people’s attention.

In February this year I organised a one off screening of “It’s a Free World” with Ken Loach at the Prince Charles Cinema open to the general public. He introduced the film and we had a question and answer session. The homeless were invited to come free while the rest of the audience had to pay. It was a great success and we hosted another event with Mike Leigh in September at the Odeon in Leicester Square. We hope to do something similar during Poverty and Homelessness Action Week 2009 (31st January -8th February). Both of these are in support of the Get Fair campaign against social injustice in the UK. (See www.getfair.org.uk).

For me the whole project has been a God send. It has offered me an opportunity to be involved in the two things I am most passionate about, which is my faith and art and culture, which is my raison d’etre and has given me a way of practically sharing this with the poor. I have found more joy and satisfaction in this than in most of my other work as a writer and director.