Rye Film Club to end its movie screenings after 18 years

Rye Film Club has had to go on ‘stand-by’, saying it was no longer feasible to run the club in its present form.

It has run screenings of movies on the first Friday of each month for the last 18 years at Rye Community Centre in Conduit Hill.

The club’s last film showing will be on Friday, September 2 from 7pm with The Honourable Rebel.

Geoff Boudreau, one of the committee members for Rye Film Club, said: “At the moment we are only getting around 20 people per film screening, which is just not good enough.

“In the early days we had 100 or more people coming to each showing.”

He added that he believed potential audiences were now more attracted to going to the Kino in Lion Street, which opened in town nearly two years ago.

Geoff said: “It’s been a very slow decline since the beginning of last year. The club is going on stand-by, so to speak. It’s the end of an era for us as regards showing of films. We may be able to do special events in the future. So if, for example, we were given some archive film, we’d still have the system in place.”

Rye Film Club, which has around 300 members, has shown all types of movies over the last 18 years, ranging from major blockbusters to foreign cinema.

Geoff added: “We’ve gone across the board but predominantly we’ve shown British films.

“In the 1990s there was an occasional film that would be shown during the Rye Festival. Everyone thought it was a good thing as there had been no cinema in town for years, so as chairman of Rye Community Centre I decided we should set up the film club. More than £40,000 has been raised over the years for the centre by the club. It’s sad when something you’ve created over many years has to come to an end.”

Any future news on the club will be on www.ryecommunitycentre.co.uk.

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