I received a helpful newsletter from the Friends of the Hyde Park Picture House;

“At last! News of the upcoming screenings at our wonderful Hyde Park Picture House, which reopens to the public on Friday June 30th. There is a lot of information now on their new website “

The Picture House has a new website which I found tricky to navigate; but there is lots of information. It seems that the new ‘second screen’ will open late July. And that 35mm screenings will also return late July. Meanwhile they plan several Open Days so that people can visit and have a look at the redeveloped cinema.

The immediate programme has a number of new titles. It is not a repertory programme but presumably when the second screen opens there will be more potential. One interesting facet is Cinema Africa!

“This screening is the official launch of our Cinema Africa! programme strand. Cinema Africa! is a new permanent feature of the Hyde Park Picture House programme. “

There are three titles in the first phase, from Senegal, Angola and South Africa.

And in August the screenings in partnership with the Pavilion Art Project return;

“La Région Centrale is an extraordinary cinematic monument lasting over three hours. Shot from a fixed point on top of an uninhabited mountain in Northern Quebec, its subject is nothing less than what can be seen in all directions. Controlling the 16mm camera is an invention designed to simultaneously manipulate its horizontal, vertical and rotational movement, as well as its speed of travel, zoom and aperture. The result is unimaginable – vision untethered from reality, but looking straight at it.”

So, there will be a definite improvement in the cinema available in Leeds and Bradford.