There's Technicolour and Cinemascope...

Cinema Day returns to Northern Ireland this coming bank holiday Monday, and with the current run of weather we might be glad of some indoor activity – and boy is there plenty! This year’s theme is home and with more venues than ever involved, there’s a range of offerings to suit all tastes and interests. If home is where the hound is, you can see Lady and the Tramp in Movie House locations across the province; if, for you, it’s something more other-worldly, catch ET at the Nerve Centre. Or if home comes loaded with Freudian undertones, check out the screening of The Amityville Horror at the Odyssey cinema, where your journey into the unheimlich can be shared with paranormal investigator Mark Young, who can offer some practical advice on what to do if your house begins oozing green-black slime (I’m guessing get out of there, unless you’re a student in the Holy Lands – in which case, it’s business as usual).

The range of venues involved reminds us of the rich history of Belfast cinemas, and this will be seen on screen too, in The Curzon Project (made with support from Northern Ireland Screen), showing at the apartments that now stand on the site of the old cinema. You can see the Curzon, alongside a number of other cinemas – some long gone, some now enjoying a new lease of life – in this short piece of archival footage, where Derek Murray explores the decline in Belfast cinemas. Although we may have lost some of our more ornate picture palaces, the continued success of Cinema Day attests to the vitality of cinema in NI. So get your corn popped, your pick ‘n’ mix shovelled, and your choices made from the Cinema Day programme!