Open Cinema

Aim

Cinema anywhere: Open Cinema enables any community to have a cinema.

Wouldn’t it be great if cinemas were local and affordable, and full of your friends and neighbours? If they showed your favourite kinds of films, to full houses, with a well-stocked bar? And if you could meet the filmmakers afterwards, and make a film yourself? 

Open Cinema is Social Cinema

Open Cinema is here to make this possible. Since 2009 we’ve been running film clubs in homelessness centres, care homes and community centres in low-income areas. We’ve also won a few awards and helped over 50 communities to make their first films. But we wanted to make #socialcinema a reality for many more people. So we built this: 

Cinema in a Box

This is the new Open Cinema – the world’s first complete community cinema platform. It enables any community space to register a venue, choose from thousands of classic and contemporary films, schedule a licensed event, and make tickets available from any device. Just as Airbnb made it possible for your spare room to be a hotel room (when you wanted), Open Cinema enables any space – a town or village hall, school or library, bar or rooftop, cave or castle! – to be a cinema, and to make money from it (legally).

Fixing the Empty Cinema Problem!

This is everything cinema was when it started – local, affordable, exciting, social – but in most cases is no longer. Commercial cinemas are mainly empty, showing films communities have no say in, in anonymous spaces which are often hard to reach and expensive to buy tickets to.

Cinema Where You Are

And yet with the equipment required now being cheaper and easier to use than ever, there’s no reason why cinema can’t happen anywhere. There are tens of thousands of potential venues in the UK and around the world. (We’ve had approaches from over 80 countries so far). In a couple of years’ time, we want you to be able to open your Open Cinema app, if you’re in Cornwall or Costa Rica, and find dozens of unique local spaces, each showing a special film for a vibrant local audience.

Social Business is Big Business

This is also an exciting business opportunity. UK cinemas brought in £1.2bn in ticket receipts in 2015. We think community cinemas could be half as big again. This is great for the people making films, as well as for audience choice and diversity. And – having welcomed over 200 filmmakers, technicians and other experts to our venues – great for the people behind the films, who have the chance to connect directly with audiences.

Our People Love Cinema 

We’re a small team of creative professionals who know that the real red carpet is in village halls, schools and pubs. Eduardo has an MBA from the London Business School, Helena is a designer and former schoolteacher, Goran started his first technology company when he was 12, and Christoph has worked in film for 18 years, to name a few of our people.

Join Us – Open Your Cinema

We’d love to have you join the wider Open Cinema family – pledge, volunteer, speak at an event (we believe that everyone is an expert on something) – or start a cinema where you are. But first give us your vote for Voom – and help us bring the future of cinema to the present.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 12th August 2016