A Map, a Projector and a Very Local Argument: Inside Trelispen’s Fifty-Mile Film Club

There is a particular sound that fills the upstairs room of the Old Rope Store on Quay Lane at precisely 7.28pm on the second Thursday of every month. It is the sound of thirty-odd people unfolding camping chairs, balancing slices of lemon drizzle on paper plates and disagreeing, politely but with feeling, about whether a postcode can have a personality.

This is the Trelispen Fifty-Mile Film Club, and it has one rule. The film must be made within fifty miles of the town, set within fifty miles of the town, or — and this is where the trouble starts — stubbornly about somewhere within fifty miles of the town. Everything else is up for debate. Which, as it turns out, is the point.

The rule that started as a joke

The club began three years ago when Nessa Bray, a retired geography teacher, suggested a winter film night for people who did not fancy the drive to the multiplex. Owen Pascoe, who runs the repair café at the back of the church hall, offered a projector. Priya Menhenick, a librarian with a sideline in sound equipment, offered a screen and the phrase that would become the club’s unofficial motto: “Nothing from further than a decent bike ride.”

The fifty-mile rule was meant to be a joke. It is now a constitution, a conversation starter and, on at least two occasions, the reason a member has brought a printed Ordnance Survey map to a screening.

“We had one chap argue that a film shot in Bristol counted because the director once got a flat tyre near Trelispen,” says Nessa, setting out a row of mismatched mugs. “We had another who said a Cornish film should be disqualified because the sea looked like Devon. The sea. As if the sea has a boundary.”

Made here, set here, spiritually local

The voting ritual is part of the appeal. Before each screening, members receive three slips of paper. On them they write a title in one of three columns: Made Here, Set Here, or Spiritually Local. The first two are usually straightforward. The third has caused more heated discussion than any planning application in Trelispen’s recent memory.

Spiritually Local, according to the club’s handwritten charter, covers films that “feel like they belong to a place within fifty miles, even if the cameras went elsewhere.” This has allowed a 1970s documentary about harbour walls, a low-budget drama about a village bus route and — controversially — a musical about a fishmonger’s daughter that was filmed entirely in a studio in London.

“It had the spirit,” insists Owen, who voted for it. “You could smell the quay.”

“You could smell the carpet,” says Priya, who did not.

The club keeps a large laminated map on the wall, marked with pins and lengths of red wool. When a new film is proposed, someone is usually dispatched to the map to measure the distance with a piece of string. The string is not accurate. The arguments are not either. Nobody seems to mind.

Cake, camping chairs and a shared screen

The venue helps. The Old Rope Store is not a cinema. It is a room with a kettle, a stubborn radiator and a stack of folding chairs that have been donated by at least four different households. There is no popcorn. There is a rota for cake. In November, the rota is taken very seriously.

“We had a new person last month who brought a shop-bought swiss roll,” says Priya, lowering her voice. “He was forgiven. Eventually.”

The audience is a mix of lifelong Trelispen residents, people who moved down during the pandemic and a handful of teenagers who come for the films and stay for the arguments. The screenings are not curated by genre or era. They are curated by geography, which means a black-and-white fishing documentary might be followed by a contemporary coming-of-age film set in a caravan park twenty-two miles away.

“I like that you never know what you’re going to get,” says regular member Dilys Hearn. “Except an argument about the map. You always get that.”

The December 2026 screening

This year’s December meeting, on Thursday 10 December 2026, has already prompted a minor schism. The film is Lanterns on the Lizard, a 1994 drama about a family running a guesthouse through a stormy Christmas. It was shot in Mullion and Cadgwith, which should make it a straightforward Made Here. But it was directed by someone from Surrey, and one scene was filmed in a studio in Plymouth. The Plymouth scene lasts four minutes.

“Four minutes,” says Nessa, with the weariness of someone who has chaired this debate before. “You would think we were discussing a border treaty.”

The evening will open with a short film, The Christmas Swim, made last year by a Trelispen teenager on a phone. It is six minutes long and features a lot of shivering. Then there will be mulled apple juice, a raffle for a tin of biscuits and a vote on whether Lanterns on the Lizard qualifies for the club’s end-of-year award, the Golden Buoy.

The Golden Buoy is a small plastic float spray-painted gold. It has no cash value. It is displayed for one month in the window of the hardware shop on Market Street. People take it seriously.

Why a postcode matters

At its heart, the Fifty-Mile Film Club is not really about films. It is about belonging, and the strange comfort of drawing a circle on a map and saying: this is ours. The rule is arbitrary. The voting is chaotic. The string is not accurate. But the room is warm, the cake is good and the argument is, in its own way, a form of affection.

“We are not trying to keep the world out,” says Nessa, as the first members begin to arrive for the November screening. “We are just trying to see where we fit in it. And if that means measuring a postcode with a piece of wool, then that is what we will do.”

Doors open at 7pm. Bring a chair, bring a slice of something, and bring an opinion about Plymouth.