Cinemas in Northern Ireland reopened on 24 May after a year of restrictions that kept most of them closed. During lockdown, Jenny McCullough talked to people with a passion for showing films across NI about the tradition of going to the pictures and the future of cinema. In the first of four articles, she focuses on Movie House Cinemas.

When coronavirus restrictions were relaxed and (some) cinemas reopened last summer, tickets for socially distanced screenings at Queen’s Film Theatre sold out. A sign by the bar said “Welcome home”. After a closure, another reopening, another closure and a lot of uncertainty, cinemas here can start to welcome back audiences who are keen to reconnect with them.

Since film shows first came to Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century and cinemas thrived from the beginning of the twentieth, going to the pictures – whether as a window to the world or an escape from it – has been a fixture of life in Northern Ireland. Facing the universal challenges of changing markets and competition from the small screen and film streaming, Northern Ireland’s champions of cinema have found distinctive ways to meet enduring demand and develop new audiences. In the time of coronavirus there is a battle, at once blockbuster-epic and arthouse-delicate, to be fought for the future of the whole economic and social sector that the cinema in Northern Ireland represents.

“People here have always loved it,” Teri Kelly, Marketing Manager of Movie House Cinemas told me. “It’s just part of the culture, “ she said, although she suggested that the weather might also have something to do with the lasting popularity of cinema in Northern Ireland. Of the over 40 ‘picture palaces’ in Belfast that existed at the start of the Second World War, only the Strand – which had to celebrate its 85th birthday in isolation – is still screening films. It’s now one element of a much wider programme of community arts, entertainment and education provision. But although cinema attendance and screen numbers fell in Northern Ireland as they did everywhere from the 1950s to a low point in the 1980s, the introduction of multiplex cinemas saw a revival in cinema-going that was embraced more enthusiastically here than it was anywhere else.    

Movie House was Northern Ireland’s first multiplex, opened by Michael McAdam in 1990. Teri remembered her first visit, long before she worked for the company, to see Home Alone. Then, she said, the cinema was “queued out the door”, as it was for screenings of films including Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Titanic, which all “played for weeks and weeks”. At the end of 2019, there were still more cinema screens per person in Northern Ireland than there were in any other part of the UK (and the Republic had the highest rate of cinema-going in Europe). Admissions per person were relatively high and ticket prices relatively low, yet admissions per screen had dropped to levels lower than anywhere else. On the closure of one of Movie House’s Belfast cinemas, Dublin Road, Michael McAdam said in February 2020 that Northern Ireland had been “grossly over-screened”, telling the BBC not only about the effect of out-of-town centres but about the changing market. “There are more reasons to stay in the house now. We have to give you a reason to leave your house.”  

Teri said that Movie House’s response to this challenge was to invest in making a visit to the cinema more special, with a “VIP” experience that involved fewer (in some cases reduced almost by half), more luxurious, seats for screens in the four venues at Glengormley, Cityside, Coleraine and Maghera. But while queues at the box office were no longer going to be the measure of a cinema’s success, no one expected to be promoting staggered start times and quiet foyers as indicators of its safety, after months of closure when everyone stayed in the house. Having put in place extra hygiene procedures as news of the pandemic began to circulate, Movie House took the decision to close on St Patrick’s Day. Staff were furloughed, with some short-term contracts going unrenewed, as the crisis put lives, livelihoods and leisure on hold.

As it looked ahead to a possible reopening, research conducted by Movie House suggested that young people and families would be likeliest to return, although as Teri Kelly says, the cinema wanted to be able to “welcome back all ages.” Expensive temperature scanners were installed, managers and staff were trained in safety procedures. As well as the new coronavirus precautions, existing attributes such as high ceilings and extensively ventilated spaces would help cinema-goers to feel comfortable, and confident. At the big Movie House complex in Coleraine, which had always attracted family audiences, they would have the chance to try out the newly installed VIP seats for the first time.

But what would they watch? The film production and release delays caused by the virus left gaps in programming for multiplexes where new blockbusters always take precedence on the biggest screens. Teri Kelly said that with the help of staff who came up with suggestions, Movie House made the most of the chance to experiment with smaller releases, including UK and Irish productions, and found an audience for them. The popularity of their “Rewind” series that delved into the back catalogue provided more evidence of demand for the experience of going to the cinema among those who wanted to “recreate how they felt” when they had first seen a favourite film (or a franchise like Harry Potter or Spiderman), or to introduce it to the next generation in the way it was originally intended to be seen.

Under the direction of Michael McAdam, Teri said, Movie House cherishes the “local feel” of its cinemas, particularly Glengormley and Maghera which have come to act as community hubs. Community safety would always be paramount, then, but the abrupt closure of leisure facilities in October without guidance for cinemas still came as an acute disappointment, especially as it meant the loss of Movie House’s precious role as a London Film Festival venue. A Christmas season of screenings was an investment in hope for the future before restrictions closed the cinemas again. After another period of uncertainty, Movie House re-opened on 24 May. In the longer term, the Movie House philosophy continues to be based on the premise that while people in Northern Ireland might like streaming films from their sofas, their “preferred place” for watching films will be the cinema that makes experiences and events of them. In other words, if you build it right, they will come.