THE Glasgow Film Theatre has reported a dramatic increase in its box office admissions – a bumper year also reflected in the number of people attending its Glasgow Film Festival.
According to figures just released, the year 2007-08 saw 161,205 admissions at the cinema, up 17 pr cent on the previous 12 months (137,363), which itself was up on its previous 12 months (125,508).
Meanwhile, admissions to this year’s Glasgow Film Festival, which took place earlier this year, stand at 20,509 admissions, a 35 per cent increase on last year’s festival.
Figures recorded by the UK Film Council and the Cinema Advertising Association for the calendar year, January to December last year, show that admissions to all cinemas rose by just under four per cent. In the same period, GFT recorded 156,194 admissions, again a rise of 17 per cent on the 2006 calendar year figure of 133,095.
Says GFT director: Jaki McDougall: “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.”
