Edinburgh Filmhouse works to begin "within weeks" with re-opening timeline revealed
Work to revive Edinburgh's boarded-up art house cinema is to finally get underway within the next few weeks.
The charity spearheading efforts to bring the Filmhouse back to life on Lothian Road has confirmed to our sister paper The Scotsman that contractors will start work in the middle of this month.
The £1.9 million revamp will include a full refurbishment of the three existing cinema spaces, including installing new seating to create extra legroom for cinema-goers, and the addition of a fourth room for screenings.
It is hoped the work, which will also include refurbishments of the cafe-bar and foyer spaces, will be completed by the end of May ahead of a public reopening in June. This would mark more than two-and-a-half years after the FIlmhouse was forced to close its doors when its parent company collapsed.
The start date for the revamp has been revealed ten months after the new Edinburgh Filmhouse charity revealed it had secured vital backing from the UK Government for the project.
Former Filmhouse chief executive and charity staff member Ginnie Atkinson said: "Work should start this month and be completed at the end of May. We hope to be completely open by June.
"Once the work is done we will open and that will be a huge milestone in the life of the city, which has been without a cultural cinema provision for over two years. The Filmhouse is an institution at the heart of the city and there has been a tangible gap since it closed.
"A unique cultural film programme that has been unavailable will be restored for the thousands of audience members that have missed this provision. It is not just a cinema, but a welcoming place that people can meet, a community hub and an asset - particularly the much missed cafe-bar."
The Filmhouse, which ran for more than 40 years in the former church building in Edinburgh city centre, closed with immediate effect in October 2022 when the Centre for the Moving Image went into administration.
Although some seating has been removed from the existing screens, with fans of the Filmhouse offered the chance to snap them up in return for a donation, most of the internal refurbishment work is still to be carried out.