Scottish Cinemas and Theatres
News and Updates
18/05/2013
Two new galleries are added today - a full interior survey of the current condition of the former Orient cinema in Ayr, with thanks to the new owners who have exciting plans for the building, plus an extensive new gallery covering the sad demolition of the auditorium block of the Odeon, Renfield Street in Glasgow.
12/06/2012
ScottishCinemas is pleased to announce a new
collaboration with fellow Scottish film website, ReelScotland.com.
Together we are launching a new resource for those interested in
the past, present and future of the moving image in Scotland: Cinematic Scotland.While ReelScotland tends to focus on Scottish made and set productions as they head to our screens and ScottishCinemas continues to be dedicated to recording and archiving our historic cinema architectural heritage, Cinematic Scotland will complement both by taking a closer look at the places those films were shot as well as the cinemas they're watched in.
Cinematic Scotland's first two big projects are a cinematic walking trail of Edinburgh, created in partnership with the National Library of Scotland's Going to the Pictures exhibition, and a tour of the locations that inspired Disney Pixare's upcoming film, Brave.
Other launch features include a look at Linlithgow's cinematic connections, a search for Sean Connery in Edinburgh and a look at the biggest cinema ever built in Europe.
Regular updates from Cinematic Scotland can also be found on Twitter.
31/01/2012
Dr Michael J Timmons, son of cinema manager James J. Timmons, has kindly contributed a number of photos and details for the buildings managed by his father in both Saltcoats and Stevenson, and the cinema connection of his grandfather and wider family to Denny.
We've also added an image of the Central Picture House in Broxburn, thanks to Shawn Watson, and a great image of the Star, Armadale before it was converted from a pub!
19/09/2011
If you've missed hearing from us recently, why not follow our somewhat more frequent updates on Twitter?
We've also recently partnered with the Cinema City project being run by the Glasgow Film Theatre, and have just released a free podcast covering a wander down Sauchiehall Street in its Glasgow and its many cinemas! Find out more and download it here.
Some great new images have been added to the site - a stunning night-time view of the New Tivoli in Edinburgh, all lit up and decorated for the Coronation, thanks to Nigel Baxter.
Also in Edinburgh, a great program for the pre-cinema days of the Albert Hall in Shandwick Place - find out about the Psychognotic Seance, plus the Burmese Mystery!
In Bathgate, a new image of the Pavilion cinema, decorated to advertise the film Cleopatra, thanks to Ian Hossack.
In the Articles section, a fascinating new article and accompanying pictures from Norman Allan, on the mobile cinemas that served the north of Scotland in the 1950s - the Highlands and Islands Film Guild, which predated the current Screen Machine by some decades!
18/03/2011
Thanks to Alistair Goldsmith, we've been able to add a detailed demolition photo gallery for the former Picture House in Troon. The decoration in the auditorium had been hidden away for many years, and was surprisingly intact.
6/03/2011
We're delighted to be able to make available in an electronic version - exclusively and for the first time ever online - the full text of the seminal research work on Edinburgh cinemas - Edinburgh Theatres, Cinemas and Circuses 1820 - 1963, by George Baird.
More details - and the download - are available here.
16/02/11
New archive images let us add pictures of the Broadway in Blantyre, the Embassy in Edinburgh, the Gaiety and Grafton in Glasgow, the Cinema in Inverbervie, Green's Picturedrome in Irvine, the Town Hall in Lockerbie, and the Central Picture House in Musselburgh.
11/02/11
DHP have announced that they are not going to accept any of the three formal offers that were submitted for the Edinburgh Odeon/New Victoria, and are instead going to press on with re-submitting their plans to demolish the cinema auditorium to make way for a boutique hotel. Details in the Scotsman article here.
The Edinburgh South Side Community Council have started a petition to the Council to perform repairs on the building, and ideally compulsory purchase it to allow one of the interested bidders to take the building.
The petition (up to 1,488 signatures at time of writing, but still rising fast) can be found here; some background to their campaign is here.
In Aberdeen, it looks like a similar scheme to replace the audtorium of the former Capitol cinema with a hotel seems likely to go ahead, according to reports in the Press and Journal.
25/01/11
Thanks to information from Alex Braid and Bill Dailly, we've a positive identification for the Unknown cinema in Dundee as the Electric Theatre (not to be confused with the Electric Theatre in Dundee!) - and have updated things accordingly. Bill has also positively identified one of the mystery Projection Box photos on the Unknown Page as that of Screen 2 at the New Picture House, St Andrews (as the photo was originally taken by himself!).
22/01/11
More new additions:
the Darvel Picture House, the Dumbarton Regal and Picture House, the Dumfries Lyceum, Dunoon Pavilion, Forfar Reid Hall, Haddington Codona, Leslie Town Hall, and the Town Hall in Port Glasgow.
New pages/images have also been added for the: Falkirk Grand Theatre, the Greenock Central, the Palladium in Kirkcaldy, the Gaiety Theatre in Leith, the Castle in Paisley, the Pavilion in Perth, Marine Park Concert Hall in Portobello, and the Electric Theatre in Stirling.
For Ayr, we've added photos of the Picture House/Gaumont, the Electric Pavilion/Green's Playhouse, the Town Hall, and the former Theatre Royal. Edinburgh sees the Theatre Royal added, with Aberdeen gaining pages for the Electric and the Gaeity.
In Dundee, newly added images for the Her Majesty's / Capitol / Majestic, the New Hippodrome / Princess, and the Cinema / BB Cinerama.
Finally, two new images have been added to the Unknown Cinemas page - can you help identify these buildings?? Let us know!
All this also lets us bring our site statistics up to date: we now have an inpressive 1,142 cinemas in the database, of which we have images of over 780 buildings, in over 250 different places around Scotland!
21/01/11
Come May 2011, it will be ten years since this website was started - quite a long time in internet years!
To get started with that, thanks to the Cinema Theatre Association Archive, we're able to add a host of new archive images of buildings not previously shown on this site. The first batch includes new pages for: the Ballantrae Cinema, Blantyre Picture Theatre, Colmonell Public Hall, Crail Airds Picture House, Dysart Memorial Hall, Eastriggs Carlyle Hall, Forth & Wilsontown Tinto, Gatehouse of Fleet Town Hall, Kinlochleven Public Hall, Laurencekirk Cinema, and the Nethybridge Community Centre - bringing the total of Scottish towns featured on this site to over 250!
More cinemas added to existing pages include: the Town Hall in Aberfeldy, the New Cinema and Pavilion in Airdrie, the Aytoun Hall in Auchterarder, the Cinema House in Bathgate, the Picture House in Bellshill, the Regal in Bonnyrigg, the Grand in Broughty Ferry, the Picture Palace in Burntisland, the Pavilion in Carnoustie, the Cinema in Castle Douglas, the Cinema and Theatre Royal in Coatbridge, the Playhouse in Couper Angus, and the Regal in Dalry.
Plenty more to come, so stay tuned!