News / Mareel’s cinema is open
SHETLAND’S new cinema opened to the public for the first time on Friday with the box office cartoon blockbuster Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, which also marked the opening of the islands’ film festival Screenplay.
However the pleasure of screening the very first movie in the 160 seat auditorium was promoter and publisher Malcolm Younger, who won the privilege two years ago by paying more than £700 to the BBC’s Children in Need appeal.
He filled 158 seats with invited guests to enjoy the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises on Mareel’s big screen with a sound big enough to make the seats rumble.
The sound proofing was powerful enough to block every on screen explosion from interfering with the classical piano recital by local maestro Neil Georgeson – close the cinema door and you could hear a pin drop.
Younger raised almost £1,000 on the night for his Callum Younger Reach Fund, dedicated to the memory of his son who died in 2005.
“Callum was really, really keen on watching films and the experience of seeing his face glued to the screen and laughing when we saw Meet The Fockers will be engraved on my mind for the rest of my life,” he said.
“I thought it would be really good to help children everywhere through Children In Need and to help children in Shetland through the Reach Fund, and it would also be really good fun to have the premier and invite people involved in the fund and my friends along.
“Mareel has definitely been worth waiting the extra two years. It’s obviously been a really complex building which they have had to get right, and they have.
“We should now go out and support it and make it a true asset for this community.”
Public screenings proper start on 10 September after Screenplay ends.
Only the first four days have been programmed so far, but they will be packed with eight films – the two cinema screens operating three times a day and four times a day at weekends.
The first films will be Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, Ted, Prometheus 3D, A Royal Affair, The Angel’s Share, Moonrise Kingdom and The Amazing Spiderman.
Kathy Hubbard, of Shetland Arts, said that it was marvellous to be able to hold Screenplay in Mareel, which only opened to the public a week ago with a formal opening due to take place later in the year.
“There’s a real festival atmosphere,” she said.
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