New Chichester Film Club for young people aged 18 to 25

“The Film Club is a new way of trying to get young people in and is really an audience development initiative,” says Anne-Marie Flynn, executive director at the venue.

“We launched it at freshers’ week in September at the Bognor and Chichester campuses. We signed up about 25 people and the idea is they pay £3.50 to join and that entitles them to see any film for £3.50. It makes it cheaper than anywhere else.

“And also on the first Tuesday of every month we put on a film specifically for them. The idea is that we make an event of it, we give them pizza, they have a nice time, they meet and they chat and then they watch the film. For £3.50 they just rock up. The idea is that they come a good hour before, have a bit of pizza on us, get to meet each other, chat about the film and then enjoy the film.

“It was born out of two things. We wanted to get young people in the cinema but also we wanted to recognise what increasingly we are hearing from university lecturers and colleges and that is that young people are still really suffering from the effects of the Covid pandemic.

“You hear about all the mental health problems that are still beleaguering young people, young people who have lost their confidence particularly in social scenarios. They don't seem to go out to drink and a lot of them just stay on the campus. And if they want to see a film, they just switch on Netflix. We thought if we launched this for them then it would enable them to meet up and be part of a normal cinema audience. They come along and they are with people who are all their age. We put on music. We have pizzas and we have a great time.

“And for us it's also a chance to introduce them to some great films that they might not have heard of. The first one was in October and we put on Fargo and somebody actually came along from Fargo! They were a student and they were in Chichester.”

“And then in November we had Carrie and then in December we had The Sixth Sense. We're planning Point Break for January and Psycho for February and Amelie for March. We're trying to programme an eclectic range and we realised that it shouldn't just be put together by us oldies. We need to get their heads together to see what they would like to see. We asked them and Amelie and Psycho came from them as suggestions.”

But Anne-Marie admits there's still a way to go: “We are just scraping together double figures in terms of attendees. Getting people to come is so hard. I think it's a mixture of things. You and I remember the excitement over films like Jaws and The Silence Of The Lambs and you just couldn't wait to go along to see them at the cinema and then there was a protected window before those films went to Blockbusters and then TV. You could only see them if you went to the cinema and there was a real excitement. But that doesn't exist now. Young people are never more than a couple of clicks away from the seeing the films that they want to see and they just don't have that excitement of being in a darkened room watching them on a cinema screen and being all together – the kind of experience that you really remember for years. Now films are so ubiquitous. Just a couple of clicks and you've got it but we all know that it's not the same. It really isn't.”

At the moment the monthly Film Club nights are an investment for the cinema – in the sense that currently they are losing money on them: “But we are determined to make them work. We're going to give them at least a year to bed in.”

More details from the cinema.