A film fan is launching a new community cinema in Helensburgh after feeling the loss of the town’s Tower Digital Arts Centre.
Richard Fairman, of Garelochhead, founded StopGap CIC in June after the town’s community cinema closed down.
It’s hoped a community buyout will secure the future of the Tower Digital Arts Centre, with a ‘Save the Tower’ campaign successfully getting past the first stage of its application to the Scottish Land Fund.
However, Richard says the town has now been without a community cinema for too long.
He said: “The tower closed in May this year so there hasn’t been any cinema in Helensburgh for nearly six months.
“Save the Tower are trying to do a community buyout and certainly I felt that six months is long enough not to have a cinema in Helensburgh.
“So, we’ve set up our own community cinema and all the equipment has been sponsored by local businesses.
“It’s certainly important because it’s not just entertainment it gets people out of their houses, it helps people with mental health problems, it helps with loneliness and if people get lonely it gives them some sort of focus during the week to go see a film.
“I’ve sort of loved film all my life.
“I used to go to the old Tower cinema at least once a week. I felt the loss when the tower closed and felt the loss of the facility and not being able to go see a film.”
The venue for the community cinema will be located at Peckham’s in Helensburgh and the first screening to be shown at the end of November will be summer blockbuster ‘Twisters’.
Richard continued: “The cinema industry is in a very poor way. There’s been a Cineworld closed in the Fort this week, a local cinema in Oban closed. When cinemas are in their own dedicated building, they have very high overheads where they’ve got to pay insurance and community tax.
“The model we’re using is very low cost, no overheads and we rent the funds for the room as and when it’s required.
“We don’t pay insurance because that is all covered by the rental cost so we’ve brought the overhead down to a bare minimum, and the costs are only done through a screening-by-screening basis.”