Magic of cinema will outlive coronavirus closures - Yvette Huddleston

Meanwhile the Odeon chain, which runs 120 cinemas in the UK and Ireland, also announced this week that it was to shut a quarter of its cinemas on weekdays with only weekend opening. The situation has not been helped by certain big box office movies postponing their releases – the release of the latest James Bond movie No Time to Die, for example, already delayed, has now been put back to April 2021.

It’s another pandemic-related blow to the arts sector and will also have a detrimental knock-on effect on the British high street. Cinemas, like theatres, music venues, art galleries and museums, make a huge contribution to the local (and national) economy.

Cinema is a relatively new artform – it has only been around for just over a century, unlike theatre which has been entertaining, thrilling and educating audiences for thousands of years – and it has seen huge changes in its short lifetime.

Since the Lumière brothers first presented a film to a paying audience in Paris in December 1895, the technology of the moving image has developed at pace. And that has been a contributory factor in its decline. These days anyone can watch a movie on their smartphone.

However, watching a film alone on your laptop or mobile, while convenient, is an entirely different experience to sitting in a cinema in front of a big screen sensing the collective anticipation of your fellow audience members as the lights go down. It is the shared experience that makes it special. And it seems that there are still plenty of people who crave that. The figures for cinemagoing in Europe in 2019 were actually very good. According to statistics from the international cinema trade body UNIC 1.34 billion admissions were recorded last year which represents a 4.5 per cent increase on 2018, with the UK taking £1.25bn at the box office. The figures 
for 2020 are, of course, going to be pretty dire for obvious reasons, but judging by those for 2019, to paraphrase the great Mark Twain, reports of cinema’s death (due to Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like) have been greatly exaggerated.

In addition to the big chains, we have so many wonderful historic cinemas here in Yorkshire as well as some great independents; let’s try and do our bit to support them and visit if we can.

The magic of cinema is there to be experienced and there really is nothing quite like it. Pass the popcorn.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today.

Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers.

So, please - if you can - pay for our work. Just £5 per month is the starting point. If you think that which we are trying to achieve is worth more, you can pay us what you think we are worth. By doing so, you will be investing in something that is becoming increasingly rare. Independent journalism that cares less about right and left and more about right and wrong. Journalism you can trust.

Thank you

James Mitchinson