Vale Venues is an inventive new partnership between Film Hub Wales and eleven mixed arts centres and community cinemas across the Vale of Glamorgan.

The venues will work together to promote films screenings at all eleven sites, giving rural audiences the best chance to find out what’s happening in their town or village.

Coordinated by the Memo Arts Centre in Barry, the largest independent cinema in the Vale of Glamorgan, the project will launch with a series of special ice-breakers film screenings across the cinema network in early 2019.

Vale Venues and the Memo will present a brand-new film festival that celebrates film under the theme ‘Discovery’, which will include screenings and film events. Spanning from the Summer to Christmas 2019, the new film festival will be the first of its kind in the county.

Hana Lewis, strategic manager at Film Hub Wales explains:

“Cinema is vibrant in the Vale, with a variety of experienced organisations offering imaginative film activities for local audiences. There is huge potential to harness this within a film festival that brings isolated audiences together to celebrate their communities and find out what’s happening in their area year-round.”

Kate Long, General Manager at the Memo Arts Centre adds:

“We are excited to be working collectively with our partner cinemas to develop our partnerships, and are looking forward to presenting a film festival featuring a wide range of films for audiences across the Vale. We see the partnership as a great opportunity to encouraging cinema audiences to visit all our cinemas to see what we have on offer. We want to bring the best of films to the Vale, including cinema classics, British independents, shorts, animations, documentaries, international film, and even some homegrown Welsh content. The Vale Venue CineFest19 will showcase cinema in adventurous places, create more family friendly events, engage with schools and provide more opportunities for inter-generational, dementia friendly and relaxed film events.”

Venues involved in the project also include Barn At West Farm, Colwinston Community Cinema, Cowbridge Big Screen, Dinas Powys Community Cinema, Llancarfan Community Cinema. Memo Arts Centre, Peterston Village Hall, Snowcat Cinema at Penarth Pier Pavilion, St Donats Arts Centre, Sully Community Cinema and Ystradowen Community & Sports Association.

Nicola Summer Smith, Creative Rural Communities:

“We identified the social value of community cinemas for the Vale and helped support them in their early days.  It’s been great to see how these cinemas have developed to serve their own communities, and how new cinemas are still being formed. This scheme will mean that they can now come together to share skills, knowledge and promotion and to have a place where they can continue to learn from each other.”

The film programme brought to you, will be supported by the BFI, with National Lottery Funding as part of the BFI Film Audience Network (FAN), creating opportunities for audiences to see and enjoy a broader range of films.