Member spotlight

Clonakilty Film Club

Clonakilty Film Club has been a member of the access CINEMA network since 2006, and we’re delighted to highlight their work this month.

Screening out of the Park Cinema, the club has developed a strong audience over more than 200 screenings, and has reliably showcased the best of world and independent film. Their most recent season wrapped up in April with a screening of Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail.

Mark Holland has put together some fascinating reflections on 19 years of Clonakilty Film Club – encompassing the club’s 35mm origins, the challenges of the financial crisis and COVID years, and right through to the recent excitement of finally moving to the host cinema’s Screen 1…

By 2006, film was well established as a digital medium but here in Clonakilty we were holding on to tradition. Feature films, depending on their running time, would come in three reels of 35mm plastic. A couple of the film club committee would have to go in over the weekend to ‘make up’ the reels, splicing them into one for seamless projection, and stay on on Tuesday night to take them apart again, ready for despatch the next day.

Splicing the second or third reel the wrong way up wasn’t the only thing that would go wrong with the way out of date equipment. How quickly we forget but it used to be a feat in itself to get to the closing credits without some detrimental malfunction.

As these copies were expensive and sensitive, they were scarce by today’s standards, so we could be waiting two and a half or even three years for a precious copy to make it all the way down here. Today, in 2025, films get released so quickly that if we select a film from the Summer list to show in the Autumn we have to keep an eye out to make sure that it won’t be streamed before it is screened!

Like our cinematic neighbours in Bantry, an hour’s drive West from here, we are lucky in Clonakilty, a town with a population of 5,000 people, plus hinterland, to have a three-screen cinema. Most towns this size don’t. The management and staff have to run a really tight ship to keep it afloat.

The cinema was built in the late 1990s with government investment incentives, and was one of the last in the country to go digital. Everything else was basic too, but every year, bit by bit, they’d swap something out for something newer to improve the facilities and the experience.

We started in the Autumn of 2006, the Tiger years at their most comfortable – King Frankie territory – with about 70 members; fully paid up in advance for 12 films, 6 before and 6 after new year. Each member was entitled to bring one guest only, paying cash at the door. We were accommodated in Screen 3, the smallest one, at 9pm on a Tuesday night.

On a busy night we would have to hold back a certain number of seats for members until a couple of minutes past screening time before we could let the rest of the guests in.

With the economic crash, around 2010, everything changed. Memberships evaporated to around 20, we became dependent on guests. People’s work arrangements changed with many having to move or emigrate. Our mid-twenties to mid-forties cohort were most affected and we had a change of personnel on the committee too. Things were touch and go for six years. Our biggest fear was that of taking money from members in September that we may not have, to refund them, if we went bust during the season. We were completely dependent on the Europa Cinema grant assistance for those years. Maeve and all of the crew at Access held our hand during all of this, and assured us that ‘we’ would manage something if it came to it.

We had many meetings, hatching many a cunning plan, promotions and initiatives. We also had many dedicated committee members giving their time for free, with a heart and a half, understanding the importance of making the voice of international independent film accessible to remote places.

We also managed to nudge our way into Screen 2, got the screening time put back to 8.30, and the cinema went digital… hard drives in the post 🙂

By around 2017, after a long drought, we began to notice, slowly at first, the very welcome sight of fresh new faces, many returning home after their economic sabbatical. Things were looking up and the pressure began to ease. With a bit of luck we’d all start having fun again.

Where we are, geographically, it’s a real headache for Maria and Karen having to allow extra time for DCP hard drives to get to us and to go on to the next site. The couriers require an extra day for delivery, and an extra day for despatch. Our site is not a full time cinema – it is not usually open during the day. The cinema is part of a complex that includes a hotel and a leisure centre. Depending on how familiar the delivery driver is with the place, the hard drives can get dropped off at the wrong desk and ‘go missing’. And, sometimes, depending who is on, the hard drives may not be where the driver goes to pick them up again. As we show on a Tuesday night, and hard drives take time, and a person, to ingest. If everything is not in place by the previous Thursday (or Friday) it leaves very little time after the weekend to fix things before show time.

Many is the last minute stroke that the cinema gods at Access have had to pull for us, to get us out of the doo-doo to ensure that the show goes on. It is all done for love, and we know that they do! It is certainly for more than the money that they get paid. And just when it was all falling back into place… lockdown.

COVID changed everything, and not all in a bad way.

We managed to more or less see our Spring season out in 2020, as the authorities tried to come up with a roadmap of what lockdown would look like, and for how long? The cinema here (The Park) was very quick to implement all of the guidelines, and we had a decision to make. To go ahead or not, and how to. We probably had enough cash in the bank to carry a half season, if attendances were very low, and it was our members’ money after all.

We decided to take a chance on doing what we hoped was the right thing and go for it.

There would be no ‘handling’ of memberships, etc… Everyone would be admitted as a guest for €10 at the door. Now, I may be looking back with slightly rose-tinted specs, but I would like to say that it (almost) took off.

There was a greater need than ever for social outlet, anything communal, albeit with masks on and distancing. We also suspended giving our brief intro talk before the shows, so as not to be standing up the front speaking loudly to the audience, and possibly spreading germs. People who we had never seen before, from towns and villages further away than usual, came out, and I think, all in all we did very well. Both providing a service/serving a purpose, and financially.

In November 2023 Access gave us the opportunity to show an Irish made documentary about living in the Gaza strip. A place not much bigger than the greater Dublin area that had a population of just over 2 million people. Waiving all fees at the behest of the documentary makers, providing us and our community with a means to show our support and raise funds for humanitarian aid.

We scheduled to show it the week after our Autumn programme ended, just before Christmas. As we were getting our promotion ready for it in November, I remarked that ‘it’ could all be over by then. It was too awful even then to believe that it could continue.

Clonakilty Film Club today

So many years on, we still have not reinstated the memberships. This seems to work fine for all of our loyal supporters, but it’s also less work for the committee members, all of whom pay their tenner in the same as everyone else. We have reinstated the intros, by popular demand, and we spread these around amongst a few of us…

And this year, oh sweet heavenly joy, we have finally arrived. The cinema relented and have decided to stick us into Screen 1. The luxury of being in the bigger space with the bigger screen and better speakers is so good, and our guests love it.

We have had so many people involved over the 19 years, we owe so much to so many, that I definitely do not want to mention any names, as I am bound to forget one. There is always an exception though. I think the spirit of our club is encapsulated in the memory of our great pianist Laurie Baynes, whose depth and generosity touched all of us at some stage. Sometimes, when I’m looking for inspiration, I think ‘what would Laurie do?’

Clonakilty Film Club

Clonakilty Park Cinema,

Cloheen,

Clonakilty,

Co. Cork.

Facebook page

Member spotlight archive

August 2024 – Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford

September 2024 – My Little Film Club, Dublin 4

October 2024 – Esker Arts Centre / Eagla Fest, Tullamore

November 2024 – Sligo Film Society, Sligo

December 2024 – Kilcullen Bridge Cinema

February 2025 – The Picture House / Wexford Film Society

March 2025 – Source Arts Centre, Thurles

April 2025 – Millbank Theatre, Rush

May 2025 – Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny

Our members

Join us

Resources