A new community cinema night is launching on Smithdown Road

A new community cinema night is launching on Smithdown Road with a screening of Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and a Q&A with Liverpool screenwriter Peter Turner, whose life story the film is based on.

Since it opened in 2021, Smithdown Social Arts Hub has established itself as an inclusive place for artists to exhibit and for events including poetry, music gigs and drawing classes.

Now it’s expanding the film side of what it offers to reach an even wider local audience, hosting a new community cinema with organic popcorn and chocolate in the ground floor gallery.

The night, which organisers plan to make monthly, will start this Thursday from 6.15pm.

Brenda Monahan, Director at Smithdown Social Arts Hub, says they’ve been keen for a while on having cinema in the space, and a collaboration with Smithdown Litfest founder Ian Skillicorn helped it to happen.

She said:

“We had a film school where we did script to screen and we made 10 short films which were screened at FACT, but this will be our first screening of an external film,”

“We’ve been working with Ian for about a year, and he mentioned the idea of having a community film space. We’d already thought about that, and Ian knows Peter so he suggested this as the first film.  

“It sold out in two days so obviously it’s something people are really keen to see here.”

Smithdown Social Arts Hub opened on Smithdown Road, opposite the junction with Ullet Road, in June 2021.

Plans by social entrepreneur Paul Tsanos, owner of Naked Lunch café, to renovate previous premises on Crawford Road had to be shelved due to lost funding in Covid.

But this three-storey building gave them a renewed opportunity to launch the hub – first for digital exhibitions during lockdown and then as a physical space once everywhere opened up again.

Brenda explains:

“When Covid hit we needed to pivot our business to something more digital, so I came up with a strategy to create an online space for art, music, film and literature projects. 

“Paul had this building on Smithdown that had been shut down because of Covid, that’s where we are now, so we let go of Crawford Avenue and in December 2020 we moved to do the digitised strategy within this space.

“We opened the gallery in June 2021 when we were allowed to reopen again and had our first exhibition in collaboration with Saphina Aziz, who helped us to find a group of artists from different cultures. 

“I started creating projects and we’re now on our 31^st exhibition. I wanted to give as many artists access as possible and we’ve helped 120 artists to have exhibitions.”

With three floors of space, Brenda says they’re always looking for additional ways to open the hub up to the community.

Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool will be the first of many cinema nights to be scheduled into 2025, and there are already plans to show the black and white classic 1951 version of Scrooge for Christmas.

“We have a sound system that runs through the gallery so it lends itself to screenings and we have an exhibition that will open the following day so everyone will get a sneak preview of that too.

“We really want to get people in who live in the area who maybe didn’t know about us and what we do because we’re here as a creative space for them to use.

“We have three floors and they can rent the space as well so there are lots of opportunities to get more things happening.”

Find out more information about the community cinema nights on Smithdown Road here.

Find more events across Liverpool here.