Festival brings film back to Jersey Opera House
Saturday 6th September 2008, 9:57AM BST.
THE silver screen is coming back to the Opera House after half a century.
A legal covenant stopped films being shown at the venue after it was sold by the Odeon Company in the 1950s – but the board of the Opera House say that because the Jersey Odeon company no longer exists, the covenant has fallen away.
Last summer, the board got around the covenant to show Singalonga Sound of Music by claiming that the audience participation made the show a live performance, not a simple film screening.
But for the upcoming Branchage Film Festival, the documentary Man On Wire will be shown on 25 September – without any live performance at all.
Opera House chairman Advocate Christopher Lakeman says that because the company that set up the covenant no longer exists, it cannot be binding.
But he added that showing films would not become part of the ‘core business’ of the Opera House.
Pictured: Patrons attend the last film showing at the Opera House in December 1958
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My pal Norman and I were regulars at the Opera House in the late ’40s. We each bought a bag of 4d doughnuts from the baker near Charing Cross and would enjoy them watching the latest Western to come out. It was a cosy little cinema. In those days there were five cinemas in the town area: Opera House, Wests, Odeon, Forum, and New Era. We were regulars at all bar the last named. Of course there was no television in the island in those days.
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Dear sir, Films being shown at the Opera House bring back fond memories as I was a projectionist there in the late 1940s, it was my first job which i enjoyed very much under Mr Singleton whom I believe is still going strong. Why not show films again providing you can fill the seats, cinema is becoming popular again.Anything to help with running cost is a plus, please do everything to keep the Opera House going it would be a disaster to lose such an iconic building.
E.M.McFarling.
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