"With more than 400 members, OFU is surely one of the biggest and most exciting societies on campus."
That's what I had to say in a Barefacts article celebrating OFU's breathtaking 2000-2001 season. Then I quickly and quietly left the university before I had a chance to be proven wrong.
What follows is a distillation of OFU history in easy-to-digest nuggets. If you have any information that can help fill in the blanks, please leave a comment on this blog or email us.
1955: OFU's earliest documented film - for the BBC, no less.
1967: OFU's earliest surviving film - Rag '67.
1969-1974ish: OFU's golden era of filmmaking under Robert Lenk et al: Enter The Newt and Boy With A Moon And Star On His Head.
1972ish: OFU logo designed by Gail Edwards. Still in use today.
1970s: OFU showing films in LT-D.
1980s: OFU showing films in parallel with Stag Hill Film Club. OFU helps bail out SHFC financially.
1990s: OFU showing arts films to the public in association with the university (trading as University Arts Cinema). By now, OFU has moved out of LT-D and calls LT-G home instead.
Early 1990s: First serious attempt to move to 35mm abandoned.
Early 1990s: Some films produced on video. No true filmmaking capability at this time.
1995ish: First year that OFU fails to make an operating profit. Latenighters etc. stop around this time.
1998: Union strongly advocating moving OFU to video projection in the Helyn Rose (Lower) Bar. Rejected.
1999: OFU acquires 16mm, Super-8 and 8mm cameras and resumes film production.
2000: Faced with growing competition from USSU (which shows its own video-projected films - for free - every week), OFU promotes itself by projecting South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut against the side of the Duke Of Kent (EIHMS) Building. Air Traffic Control phones to complain.
2001: Filmbank ceases 16mm distribution. OFU launches second serious attempt to move to 35mm.
2001: OFU acquires Vic8 35mm/70mm projector from the Millennium Dome sale and swaps it with Union Films Southampton's Vic5 35mm projector.
2001: OFU demerges into filmmaking society and a new amenity, Surrey Student Cinema. Film exhibition outside of the main Union building ceases.
2002-????: OFU making films on DV.
2003: USSU effectively kills SSC by refusing to support its 35mm proposal, as laid out in 2001.
2005: USSU reportedly commences disposal of OFU's assets, such as its 16mm Fumeo studio projector.
