The entrance to the Community Centre

A cinema was opened in Sawston in the early 1930′s and operated until its closure in the early 1970′s.  Since then the  cinema building has been a Youth Centre, managed by Sawston Village College, the local secondary school and the first of the village colleges to be established in Cambridgeshire, and is currently used by local youth and community groups.

There are clear historical reasons why re-establishing cinema in Sawston and in the former cinema building is important.  The original cinema was established by Spicers Ltd, a local Sawston company, which also developed the Spicer-Dufay mosaic colour process in 1931 – Dufaycolour film, which was one of the first moving image colour film processes and so, in this way, there is an important association between Sawston and the history of British cinema.

In addition to this, there is currently no cinema in South Cambridgeshire.  Sawston is the largest settlement in the district, with a population of ca 7500, and reopening the cinema in Sawston would provide a much-needed facility to serve the district and address, to a certain extent, the geographical imbalance in cinema provision.  As well as providing a focus for young people’s leisure, it would also cater for others with limited access to Cambridge, such as the elderly and those with disabilities.  Furthermore, it would be accessible, compared with cinemas in Cambridge, to families and those on low incomes as there would be no expensive parking costs or bus fares to factor into a cinema attendance.

Working with Cambridge Film Trust

Cambridge Film Trust talking to the Film Club

The Cambridge Film Trust has also indicated that there would be scope for programming screenings from the Cambridge Film Festival at any cinema resource in Sawston, which would further attract audiences into Sawston and promote Sawston as a centre for cinema.

The project to get the cinema back in operation is now almost complete and the first films were be shown using the new projector, screen and sound system late in 2008.  A programme of screenings is now in place to take the cinema through to summer 2009.