Action! £1.25m appeal for Historic Edinburgh cinema

A fundraising campaign has started to reopen the historic Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh. 

Supporters want to raise at least £1.25 million to cover the cost of reopening and refurbishing of the 19th-century building on Lothian Road by next year.

It housed a three-screen cinema and was home to the Edinburgh International Film Festival before the collapse of its parent charity, the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), last year. 

Caledonian Heritable, which owns the Dome and the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, bought the cinema from administrators for £2.6 million.

Four former staff led by Ginnie Atkinson, who was chief executive, created a charity, Filmhouse (Edinburgh) Ltd, in 2022.

‘This is a significant step on the journey towards restoring cultural cinema provision for the city,’ said Ginnie.

‘Filmhouse is more than just a cinema – it’s a home for cinema lovers and for film festivals and is proud of its track record in the area of film education, which would continue. 

‘We are delighted to be able to launch the fundraising campaign with the goal of opening the doors to a newly refurbished cinema building in 2024.’

The re-opened Filmhouse would operate independently as a cultural cinema and would run the in-house café-bar to support the charity. 

From its reopening the venue would work to develop new audiences in Edinburgh, to support a wide range of local and national film festivals, and to deliver cultural cinema in all its diversity.

Screen Scotland, City of Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Government have been working to secure a future for cultural cinema in the city across the months since the CMI’s collapse. 

Following the news that Filmhouse (Edinburgh) had secured an interim agreement with Caledonian Heritable, Screen Scotland confirmed it has awarded Filmhouse (Edinburgh) Limited £60,000 to support its planning and development work in the near-term.

 David Smith, Director of Screen Scotland said: ‘I know that everyone round the table shares the same ambition – one also held by those many campaigners who raised their voices in support of the Filmhouse across recent months – to see the Filmhouse projectors kick back into life and the seats full of cinema lovers for decades to come. That’s an ambition Screen Scotland is very happy to support.’

Donations can be made here. 

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