City's oldest cinema has week to reach £450k goal

Liverpool's oldest surviving cinema the Woolton Picture House has just over a week left to raise enough money to reopen its doors after a six-year break.

The cinema, which first opened in 1927, closed in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic before a campaign got under way to save it.

Kevin Fearon, one half of the couple behind its hoped revival, said a recent hot dog sale and two anonymous cheques totalling £6,000 have pushed them closer to their £450,000 goal to reopen the near 100-year-old attraction.

"It's not often an opportunity comes up like this where the community can come together for the greater good - it's powerful," Fearon said.

Fearon and wife Gillian Miller, who both run the Liverpool Royal Court theatre, started the campaign last summer.

Since then, the pair have hosted infrequent seasonal showings of films to help raise money and even staged a Love Actually-themed proposal for a local couple last year.

The pair have until 6 May to reach their goal, although Fearon is confident.

For him, the presence of an independent cinema in the Liverpudlian suburbs with so much history behind its walls marks a real opportunity.

"I don't know why but I always thought it would happen, that's why me and Gill started it and we've been [proven] right, people do want it to work," he said.

Fearon added the first cheque they received was from a man in Kirkby nine months ago, who sent a cheque for £1,000.

"He'd never been to the cinema before, but just thought it was a good thing to do," he said.

"The community is great here and we're helped by the fact it closed, I think people take things for granted until they're gone."

Fearon said with the growing popularity and ease of watching films at home, venturing to a cinema is a fading love - adding people chat about their memories of the film they are about to watch before the lights go dark.

"Watching a film with other people is so different to watching at home, I'd forgotten how good cinema could be," he said.

"It's a shared experience and then you all focus on the film which again you don't do at home - you go and make a cup of tea, you stop when you fall asleep, go to bed early but in the cinema you pay your money and watch it until the end."

The cinema is hosting several films this weekend in the short run up to their deadline, which Fearon admitted is "down to the wire".

They need an extra £21,000 to hit their mark - helped by some £7,000 raised last weekend through 350 hot dog sales.

The campaign will end with a screening of the Italian 1988 film Cinema Paradiso, a love letter to cinema, charted through the bond between a young boy and ageing projectionist who works at their local picture house.

"That's clever programming," Fearon joked.

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