Cinema revival a success of Lions commitment

The cinema team being presented with a Kilcullen Community Award.

When Teresa Nurse was elected president of Kilcullen Lions Club she was asked by a club colleague what would be her 'signature' project for the year? writes Brian Byrne. She admits being caught on the hop by the question, but quickly decided it would be to bring public cinema back to Kilcullen.

In retrospect it was a no-brainer. Kilcullen had its Town Hall Theatre, fully fitted out for plays by the Kilcullen Drama Group. There was also a cinema tradition there going back to 1939, which had ended in the mid-1970s after a heyday period through the '50s and half a decade later.

"There was this beautiful space, leather seats, with a full-size screen and computer projector for illustrated talks already installed," Teresa recalls. "As a Lions club we used to hold a couple of film nights for our members during a year, but doing them for the public was difficult because of licensing requirements. We had often discussed setting up some kind of film club, and then we heard about Access Cinema, which negotiates cultural movie licensing on behalf of non-profit community groups and clubs." The organisation is funded through the Arts Council and is associated with Europa Cinemas, the international network of  cinemas for the circulation of European films, and with the International Federation of Film Societies. 

A Zoom-based information session with Access Cinema provided Teresa and fellow Lions with details of the opportunities available. After setting up a dedicated team within Kilcullen Lions, they completed the process to make Kilcullen Bridge Cinema a member of the network. "Access were really super. They tried to demystify it for us, and they couldn't have been more helpful in what was a complicated licensing and fees matter." The organisation provides seasonal lists of available films to the network membership, under broad headings of documentary, artistic, and crossover-mainstream. The service includes write-ups of the films, to help with selection and promotion. 

An initial idea to get up and running for May of 2023 proved too ambitious and the launch was pushed out until September. A commitment by Cllr Tracey O'Dwyer to provide a portion of her LPT funds allocation helped with the startup costs. “But it was more than just the money, it was the morale support it gave us that someone thought we were doing the right thing.”

Teresa recalls that it was a 'scary' time, especially during the summer holidays months, with the launch looming at the end, when it was difficult to get the cinema team members together. “I remember walking into the Town Hall on my own and wondering how things worked and not having the expertise about operating the video system, or even how to turn on the lights.” There was also the matter of choosing the films for the opening months, for an audience that they didn't know. 

“I watched a lot of movies. We needed to try and choose ones that would have a broad appeal, and we got a lot of help from Michael Ryan, film programme adviser at Access. There were a couple I picked from the lists, and he asked me if I'd actually seen them, that they could have some quite explicit scenes that might not work for the audience.”

Launching the project with The Fablemans.

The eventual choice of The Fablemans, based on the early life of Steven Spielberg, proved a successful opener to the project on 27 September 2023, bringing in a full house and an after-movie buzz that fulfilled the big prior expectation. Since then there have been screenings in a range of genres, including the first foreign-language offering, Rise (“small house but great energy”), as well as Halloween, Christmas and children's films, and a special season of five movies in February selected on themes associated with Brigid. That last was particularly well received, and is going to be repeated for February 2025. “I suppose there is more awareness of the female perspective in film now, and this last year particularly there were quite a few with female leads.” 

Cllr Tracey O'Dwyer opening the Brigid 1500 season.

Fostering inclusion and diversity is an essential component of the initiative, and a number of films have dealt with this directly or peripherally. The local relevance is evident in that some of the Kilcullen Bridge Cinema patrons have been people who were new to Kilcullen, not born in Ireland, and for whom English is not their first language. “I remember someone saying to me the day after one film, about a person they saw in the street, that they were seeing them in a different way and they hoped their settling in Ireland was OK for them. That's what film does, it allows you to see the world in somebody else's eyes. It challenges your own perspective.”

The Kilcullen Bridge Cinema team is seven strong, and Teresa says that is both fortunate and essential. “The paperwork and booking and promotion can be mostly done from the comfort of your own home, but when it comes to the days before a showing you need to have people on the ground. There is such a good group of us, to make sure everything is ready to go, the technology, the heating on the night. It all works only because we are people together.”

People together as an audience is also the attraction of cinema, Teresa says. "It is just so much more rewarding, a more fulfilling experience to watch on a big screen with other people. The auditorium is comfortable and welcoming, and nobody's a stranger there. It's also, I suppose, a non-threatening kind of environment." It can also encourage a collective participation, such as during the screening of Dream Horse during Cheltenham Week 2024. "Everyone in the cinema was cheering on the horse, it was really fun." There's interaction too in the chats afterwards, sometimes with differences of opinion. "It doesn't have to be long conversations, just a few words going out the door, that makes it a shared experience."

That experience is so much different than the individual 'solo' consumption of entertainment that the 'smartphone generation' has, and the Kilcullen Bridge Cinema team are aware of the challenges in attracting that cohort to the space. "We can't neglect the young people, we have to find ways to get them in. Our family and children's shows have always been sell-outs, so we're getting to the under-10s. As for the teen and young adults audience, we did the Stop Making Sense concert movie on Culture Night, but we didn't get that 18-30 age group. A Movie Marathon, with three films running on the same night into the early hours has been suggested and we might try that down the line."

Joe Connor and Conor Williams in the projection box.

Even after just one autumn-winter season, the positive results encouraged the team to undertake a summer-break upgrade of the projection and sound systems, which have made a very real difference to the Kilcullen Bridge Cinema experience. Lions volunteers installing the new gear were joined by cinema equipment expert Barry Gwynne from Little Stretton in Shropshire, married to Colette Flood whose family lived just a short distance from Kilcullen Town Hall. "There's now surround sound, and a laser projector, and you can really feel the improvement. It just shows just how much goodwill is out there, there are all these people who like to do something for a community that can make a difference."

Woodbine Books acts as the local ticket agent for Kilcullen Bridge Cinema, and tickets can also be bought on EventBrite. "But lots of people like to have the paper ticket, and going into Woodbine we can also chat, and sometimes get a recommendation for a good film. Which is something I've learned from all this, that you get great ideas from just listening to other people. Also, that once you have a group together, who will stick with an idea, you can do anything."

Doing this particular thing earned the Lions' cinema initiative a Kilcullen Community Award last November. Showing that their tenacity and commitment to this project is much appreciated.

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