One Simple Aim:
Make Quite Interesting films.
The driving force behind QiFilms, Steve Hunt, has been involved with TV and Film one way or another for around 30 years, being the subject of several factual / documentaries himself such as:
Collector's Lot (Channel 4 2000)
Restoration: You Make It Happen (BBC / Community Channel 2004)
Puppets, Piers and Penguins (BBC 2007)
Pier Pressure (BBC 2008)
...though he prefers working behind the camera, either producing award-winning short films for fun, or doing his "proper job" - building props and dressing sets for mainstream TV & Film, recent jobs including:
1899 (Netflix, Dark Ways 2022)
Benediction (EMU Films, BBC Films 2021)
Father Brown (BBC Studios 2013-2022)
Sister Boniface Mysteries (BBC Studios 2022)
Parallel to this, Steve has developed businesses in the field of specialised collecting - especially well known in the areas of vintage amusement machines, fairgrounds, piers and similar. Unprecedented events of the past couple of years forced a new way of structuring his specialist auction business, which resulted in the launch of the Collector Connector website, now growing its membership daily.
Over the years Steve has been privileged to meet some extraordinary collectors and viewed some truly astounding private collections, often assembled by the humblest of people with the most relentless determination to make their collections the best they can be - almost always a life-time's work.
Steve has always been struck that such passion for a particular subject, together with the sheer spectacle of an amazing collection, usually goes unnoticed. Sadly the first time many people hear of a collection, is the dispersal auction following the death of the collector. Along with that loss, decades of dedicated study and invaluable knowledge is also lost.
The aim of QiFilms is to document some of these fascinating collections for the benefit of fellow collectors both current and future. But more than just cataloguing rows of items on shelves, we'll delve into what makes collectors tick: just what drives them to dedicate their life to collecting?