THE curtain will rise on a new golden age of cinema in Grimsby.
Four years after a Grimsby Telegraph campaign to save the Whitgift Film Theatre from closure, it has invested £50,000 in digital equipment, a hi-tech sound system and new screen.
The start of the film season at the Crosland Road venue next Wednesday, September 4, will also be a prequel to the creation of a new community arts centre.
It is a far cry from the dark days in 2009 when the curtain was due to fall on the film theatre due to a lack of cash.
But after the Grimsby Telegraph turned the spotlight on the funding crisis, the money was found to keep the projectors rolling.
The school was also facing the axe in a schools' reorganisation in 2006.
But campaigners fought to show the key role the school plays in the community, in partnership with this newspaper. The school, now John Whitgift Academy, celebrated its best ever GCSE results last week and has plans to create a new arts centre in the film theatre, which have not been revealed in detail.
There were sell-out audiences at the 200-seater venue for screenings of The King's Speech and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and the team behind it hope to continue this success.
The Schools' Partnership Trust gave more than £25,000 to the upgrade, and £25,000 was raised by the volunteers who run the theatre.
Publicity officer John Sills said the group will now be able to stream live concerts and ballet for a fraction of the price of world-class theatres.
One of the two old projectors will be retained, so old film classics can still be shown.
He said: "We have the best of both worlds.
"The number of films being made both on film and digital is declining, so it was a case of move forward or close. If we had not we could only have shown old movies in future.
"We hope this will be a new golden era as cinema audiences are growing.
"This is Grimsby's only surviving cinema. We tend to show the films which might not come to mainstream cinemas.
"Our aim is to give people a wider choice and not duplicate with the other cinemas.
"We could not have achieved it without the principal and the academy trust."
Principal Mark Rushby said: "The Schools Partnership Trust is very much into developing arts and culture in education.
"We already have a £640,000 capital development underway at the school and are having the sports facilities upgraded.
"Terrific exam results and the commitment of the trust to improve opportunities for all the people in our community justifies our fight to keep the school going.
"We are looking to develop our provision in dance, drama and will host an arts festival in 2014. Performance helps build pupils' self-esteem."
The theatre's opening season will start with a screening of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Later in the season, music fans will enjoy a live broadcast of Bizet's Carmen from Sydney Opera House in Australia.
The Nutcracker will also be shown.
