Small Town on the Big Screen: The Edge of Love and the Local Experience

In May 2007, The Edge of Love (Dir: John Maybury) was filmed in the small town of New Quay in Ceredigion, West Wales. The film recounts the time that Dylan Thomas lived in the town, with an emphasis on the relationship between the two women in his life. As such, it has a very particular local ‘value’. In July 2008, the film was screened for one night only for a locals-only audience at the town’s ‘cinema’. This article recounts the filming activities and presents a snap-shot of the screening event by mapping audience responses to the text. Key issues are explored which include levels of audience participation (as extras and/or spectators), motivations for wanting to see the film, the nature of meaningful attachments to the film text, and the reasons for ‘rejecting’ the film. The importance of locality, community and nostalgia become strikingly apparent, as does the complexity of Dylan Thomas’s connection with the town and the nature of the historically embedded, local understandings and memories of the poet.