Another East Belfast icon may leave area as Connswater closure shuts Strand Cinema pop-up venue

Struggling to find a suitable replacement venue, at least until its proper art deco picture palace home on Holywood Road finishes its extensive remodelling in the middle of next year, chief executive Mimi Turtle says the Strand has been forced to hunt elsewhere for a new stopgap cinema.

"We have had to start looking beyond East Belfast,” she states, “reluctantly, as a lot of our program items are very targeted to community groups in East Belfast and people who live close by.

"We’re having to come to terms with the idea of splitting ourselves between a number of venues; one place to do screenings, one to do workshops, one to do on-street community engagement. That comes with added overheads and logistical challenges, but we simply cannot find a space that does everything under one roof. [Connswater] really was ideal."

The Strand invested heavily in its Connswater outlet, redecorating the unit with the film world’s glitz and glamour to give them a box office, projection room and backstage area for regular showings, as well as new lights and curtains.

The centre’s axing was so out of the blue that the Strand was already selling tickets for movies at the end of this month – screenings that will never take place as a result of today’s closure, with a showing of John Wayne classic Rio Grande on Thursday night bringing the curtain down on their time in the shopping centre.

Mimi told the News Letter that the cinema expected to be in Connswater for at least another nine months, and were hoping to stay there until their proper home was ready to open again.

"It’s frustrating and disappointing; we’d invested in the unit in the assumption we’d have that time to claw back the financial and social benefits of putting in all that time and effort,” she said.

"It’s been really successful, particularly with our senior audience, which makes it all the more frustrating. It takes a while to establish yourself, so it feels like we’d through the initial quiet months and, just as we’re getting there, we’ve had to close.”

Mimi says the Strand felt like they were joining a real community when they arrived in Connswater, not just in terms of the camaraderie from shops, arts goups and non-profits in the mall, but also from seeing many regular faces in the centre. “It was a real hub for a lot of people, a place for a lot of social action, and it has really great disability access; we will miss it,” she said.

Describing Connswater’s closure as “a big social loss”, she pointed out that it also leaves East Belfast without a large-scale retail centre.

“To lose some of these brand names altogether from this part of the city just seems crazy when you consider the size of the catchment here,” she said. “It seems mad that East Belfast becomes like a dormitory town, where everybody is commuting to do their spending.”