City planners need to see the light over the Filmhouse’s future - Susan Dalgety

It is hoped Edinburgh's Filmhouse cinema will be able to reopen by October.

Within weeks of the Edinburgh Filmhouse closing its doors in October 2022, the fabulous neoclassical building that housed the world’s oldest continually-running film festival quickly became a blight on Lothian Road. As dedicated campaigners set about raising enough cash to buy the cinema complex and restore it to its former glory, the façade began to crumble.

But after an impressive fundraising drive that raised around £2.5 million in grants and donations, the Filmhouse’s future looked secure. The charity, Filmhouse (Edinburgh) Ltd, signed a 25-year lease with the building’s owners and submitted plans to the city council to restore the historic cinema. This cinematic drama looked set for a happy ending.

Enter stage left Edinburgh’s city planners, who look determined to win the Oscar for the world’s most po-faced bureaucrats. These jobsworths have just rejected two proposals to improve the building, including an LED advertising board on the front. “The proposals would have an adverse impact on the character and setting of the listed building and fail to preserve the character and appearance of the Conservation Area,” they opined.

Have the planners visited Lothian Road any time in the last 50 years? It is full of brightly-coloured shop and restaurant fronts, a cheerful thoroughfare which boasts everything from the Usher Hall to the Club Tropicana nightclub. Surely an advertising banner – even one with LED lights – on the front of a newly spruced-up Filmhouse would add to Lothian Road’s character, not detract from it. And the building is a cinema, not a church as was its original function. Traditionally, cinemas use lighting displays to promote their latest blockbuster or classic re-run.

I hope a compromise can be reached. Edinburgh’s city planners have a tough job, balancing the demands of contemporary life with the need to preserve the city’s glorious built heritage. But surely a thriving, independent cinema complex which attracts customers from far and wide is far preferable to an unloved, empty building at the heart of the city. We want more bright lights on Lothian Road, not fewer.