Council gives boost to cinema scheme (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Council gives boost to cinema scheme

VILLAGE halls across the Cotswolds can continue to bring the sights and sounds of Hollywood to residents on a monthly basis.

District councillors have agreed to waive the £300 fee normally charged for the cinema licence required by any venue operating as a commercial cinema.

The authority's community committee heard that the success of the council's ground-breaking Rural Cinema scheme - designed to make up for the lack of cinema facilities in the area - had boosted the social life in villages in addition to providing on-the-spot screen entertainment.

The council spent £4,655 on a DVD player, a video player, a multi-media projector, an eight-foot square screen and a combined speaker and sound equipment, all of which can quickly be packed into the back of a car.

Under a special agreement with Filmbank Distributors the council can borrow nearly-new films for up to a month and organise the village hall screenings.

The distributors take 35 percent of the gross door takings at each showing, and CDC take five per cent to cover administrative and repair costs.

The hall committee can keep the remaining 60 percent of the door take for their own, charitable, use. The minimum recommended entrance fee for the public is £2.50 per person.

Mrs Mernagh said that at present the local screenings could be held in each venue six times a year. "If, however, villages have to pay for the licence they will keep it at that number and inevitably the scheme's momentum will be lost," she said.

She said it would be unviable for parishes to have to find the £300 required, and pointed out that feedback from those in the scheme showed that losing the screenings would mean the loss of a community event.

"People are using the showings as a social get-together," she explained, "it enables them to meet for a chat and to get to know each other better."

But Cllr Gill Peachey said CDC budgets were "under tremendous pressure," and suggested that a fee of £50 should be charged to at least cover costs. "We must cut out the sentimentality," she said, "at the end of the day someone has to pay for this."

Cllr Martin Harwood said the scheme was "one of the few things" CDC was doing which accorded with its community plan, to get life back into the villages and to give people there something for which they didn't have to travel out.

Cllr Margaret Edney pointed out that research carried out for CDC by Gloucestershire University showed that cinema was the sort of entertainment people in the Cotswolds wanted most.

Cllr Peachey's proposition was defeated and the committee voted to waive the £300 fee.

(BLOB) The committee was told that 13 parishes were now taking part in the scheme with attendances at some showings reaching the maximum permitted in the hall. In May the film shown was Chocolat, in June it was Oceans Eleven, and for July the film is Enigma.

Parishes wishing to join the scheme should contact CDC's Cirencester headquarters.