Exclusive:Edinburgh Filmhouse reopening plans revealed with programme of films 'missed' during 2-year closure​

Reopening plans for the Edinburgh Filmhouse have been revealed, two-and-a-half years after the venue closed.

Edinburgh's reborn art house cinema is to finally reopen next month after a £1.7 million refurbishment, launching with a programme of films “missed” during the venue’s two-and-a-half-year closure.

Directors of the Edinburgh Filmhouse said building work was on schedule for a June opening.

Edinburgh's Filmhouse cinema has been closed for two-and-a-half years

The soft launch will include up to a week of screenings of major films from the past two-and-a-half years, including Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, on 70mm film using historic equipment from the cinema's pre-digital days, ahead of a “major and very visible celebratory” launch event.

The cinema, on Edinburgh’s Lothian Road, closed in October 2022 when its parent company, Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), went into administration.

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The new Filmhouse will include a revamped bar and cafe area, as well as an additional fourth screen, which will give the cinema capacity to expand its programme, directors Andrew Simpson and Rod White said.

Work on the building, which is largely cosmetic, started earlier this year. Builders have stripped out “historic complexities” from the building, including what Mr White described as “50 years of telephone cables”.

“The idea was that it was well planned enough that it would be delivered in a very tight timeframe,” said Mr Simpson. “And I think we're making good progress. Slightly more than two weeks ago, it was just a shell. And the last few weeks things have started to go in.”

Mr White added: “Most things that could have gone wrong haven’t. We're quite confident that we're on a timeline now that is achievable.

“They were just empty rooms for a while, but you can start to see now what the auditoriums are going to feel like. It's got a cinematic energy to it now, which is really good.”

The box office has been reduced in size due to the popularity for online ticketing and a fourth “bijou” screen has been created, with capacity of just 24, which will available for private screenings and rental.

Meanwhile the three main screens have been reduced in capacity, from around 450 seats to 350. This has allowed for larger, more comfortable seating.

Edinburgh's Filmhouse cinema has been closed for two-and-a-half years

However, Mr White and Mr Simpson are adamant they do not want to rival luxury cinemas, such as the Everyman, which in recent years has opened Scottish branches in Edinburgh and Glasgow, charging up to £17.95 for an adult ticket.

“We're not going for that,” said Mr White. “We feel it's inappropriate for a public cinema like Filmhouse to be going for that luxury end of the market. We’re a far more egalitarian organisation than that. But at the same time, we very much embrace comfort.

“The key thing is just to give more comfort than was the case before, which is, is, you know, it was admittedly a problem before that the screens were a bit cramped. They no longer are, but it's not what you would call Everyman-style luxury.”

Mr White said pricing was still to be confirmed, but that it would be “very competitive within the city”.

“It will certainly be nothing approaching the higher end prices you get in some cinemas,” he said.

Mr Simpson added: “It's a space for the communities of Edinburgh to to meet and socialise and to discover the full diversity of cinema.”

Generated image of what the Filmhouse will look like after renovation, | Clark Contracts

The make-up of the Filmhouse’s programming is likely to be broadly along the lines of its previous incarnation.

“It sounds boring to say that it would be a version of what it was,” said Mr White, who was head of programming at the Filmhouse before its closure. “But I happen to think there wasn't an awful lot wrong with what it was.”

He added: “Certainly it won't be more commercial or anything like that. Because we have more screens, we will have a bit more flexibility to go both ways, perhaps into slightly more commercial territory or or even the other way. So it will be very similar, there'll just be a bit more of it.”

Many small film festivals, such as the Spanish Film Festival, which were historically an integral part of the cinema’s calendar, have already been booked in for the coming year. But Mr White said he was keen to “invite them all back”.

“There's a whole load of them returning,” he said. “And that's very much an area that that we would hope to develop.”

The cinema also hopes to capitalise on its ability to show older films on 35mm and 70mm film - as well as some newer releases, like The Brutalist, which was launched simultaneously on film and digitally.

While many cinemas scrapped their old machinery at the advent of digital cinema in the mid 2000s, the Filmhouse was one of few cinemas in Scotland and the only one in Edinburgh to retain its projectors, some of which date back to the 1950s.

Mr White said there was a “growing and booming” demand for films being shown non-digitally.

He said: “There are rare prints and archives all over the world that Filmhouse is equipped to show. There's a whole lot of people out there who very much enjoy watching films on the formats in which they were created. Keeping those legacy formats alive is something that the Filmhouse has always been involved in.”

The cinema has had a difficult time in recent years.

Hopes of reviving the venue as a cinema appeared to be dashed nearly two years ago when it was sold by administrators to pub operator Caledonian Heritable. However, the company, which owns The Dome, Ryan's Bar and the Theatre Royal in the city centre, agreed to lease out the building to the new charity.

Caledonian Heritable has since carried out significant repairs and restoration work on the external fabric of the building, including its roof, guttering, windows and stonework.