A new documentary film, The Picture House, will be screened in the Millennium Theatre at LIT on Thursday 25th April at 7.30pm. Next to sport, cinema has always been Limerick’s main cultural pursuit. Even today, without a city centre cinema, almost a million cinema tickets are sold in Limerick every year.
The Picture House looks back at the glory days of the single screen city centre cinema and features archival footage and photographs of twn of Limerick City Centre cinemas and the memories of former cinema workers and cinema-goers.
The hour long film revisits the stories of the different cinemas such as the Savoy, Lyric and Tivoli, the 1953 Cinema workers strike, the censorious attitude of the local authority and the Church, and the slow and inevitable decline of the single screen cinema.
The film was produced and directed by Dave Burns, in association with Paul Lynam, Declan McLoughlin and Joe Coleman, filmed by Paul Lynam, Keith Bogue and Jim Pidgeon, edited by Simon McGuire and presented by Mike Finn. Dave Burns is active in the planned redevelopment of the Royal Cinema in Cecil Street and in Fresh Film Festival.
