05/05/2008

The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), the city’s pre-eminent art-house venue and one of the homes of the Glasgow Film Festival has reported a sharp rise in box office admissions.

During the 2007-08 period the cinema recorded 161,205 admissions, marking a 17% increase from the previous 12 months (137,363). Admissions to the 2008 Glasgow Film Festival rose to 20,509 admissions, a 35% increase from 2007.

The UK Film Council and the Cinema Advertising Association for January to December 2007 show that admissions to all cinemas rose around four percent. In the same time frame, the GFT saw 156,194 admissions, a rise of 17% on the 2006 figure of 133,095.

GFT director Jaki McDougall said, “In recent years, with the increase in access to moving image through a variety of platforms such as Freeview, the web, video-on-demand, we have continued to reassess our programme and listen to what the audience says. GFT is the only cinema in Glasgow not programmed from London, which means that we can respond to customer needs.

“We concluded that the most effective way for us to satisfy audience demand was to concentrate on a ‘long-tail’ approach whereby we play a bigger number of specialist or niche films to small but rapidly growing audiences. We’ve been helped in this by being part of the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network which provided us with state-of-the-art digital projection equipment last year.”