The vibe

I went to film school in the 80s; one of my first shorts was about the women protesting against cruise missiles at the RAF base at Greenham Common. It was the marching era: anti-nuclear, anti-Thatcher, pro-miners.

I was also a groupie for the Mystery Girls – all makeup and new romantic flounces and flourishes. They toured the north of England in 1982 and I took my 14-year-old sister, Mel, along – it was life-changing. Our big influences were the New York Dolls and Marc Bolan.

I would want to programme a festival that sums up that spirit.

Venue

Cornwall – right down on the furthest south-west coast near Mousehole and Newlyn, where the sea is a riotous blue and the landscape is wild and rugged.

Format

All events are free. That’s really important to me; I’m a hippie at heart. Five themed tents, all screening 80s classics.

Tent one: Emotion

Where better than the 80s for films to jerk your tears? I remember watching Steel Magnolias and honking for 20 minutes after the film ended. So I’d show Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple – the devastating story of a young black girl growing up in the US south in the early 20th century – Terms of Endearment and Dirty Dancing.

Tent two: Goofball

They don’t make films like this any more. Big, ambitious, live-action, hugely entertaining family films. John Hughes was the maestro and we would have one of his: Uncle Buck, starringgorgeous John Candy as the hapless, feckless relative in charge of home alone. Plus Trading Places, whose biting commentary on the gulf between rich and poor remains totally relevant, and Ghostbusters: still insanely funny, with that 80s femme fatale Sigourney Weaver.

Tent three: Girls

Stories about women, some even made by women. Because there weren’t many female film-makers around in the 80s, apart from the incandescent Kathryn Bigelow. We would show her brilliant Near Dark, in which she invents a new genre: the neo-western horror. Also, Broadcast News and Aliens, with Weaver as the baddest of badass female heroes.

Tent four: Headliners

The films that shaped a generation and represented leaps forward in what was possible in front of, and behind, the camera. So: Do the Right Thing, Blade Runner and Blue Steel. From the moment Jamie Lee Curtis buttons up her tight, no-nonsense cop’s uniform over a sexy white bra, you know you are in deep with sexual politics and violent power games. That film was made in 1990, but we would show it at midnight and hope to get away with it.

Tent five: Horror

Reminiscent of the horror all-nighters at the Scala cinema in the 80s, when we would watch back-to-back Dario Argento and Andy Warhol movies. So we would have The Evil Dead – hip and skewed and grossly frightening; a cult classic that changed the scary movie terrain. Plus, Beetlejuice and The Shining, a film so terrifying I only watched the ending three years ago.

Food

All from Manchester’s Indian canteen This & That. Tin plates, proper glasses and cutlery on big trestle tables.

• How to Build a Girl is available now on Amazon Prime