Cinema celebrates 50th birthday with Jaws event

Dan Champion, programme and managing director of King Street Cinema, celebrated his 50th along with the movie theatre

An independent cinema is celebrating its 50th anniversary some 15 years after its future was in doubt as part of local authority cuts.

King Street Cinema in Ipswich is the county town's only independent cinema, first opening in 1975 in the Corn Exchange/Town Hall complex.

The cinema previously closed in 2009 when the company in charge claimed it could not make a profit, but it was reopened again by an independent trust the following year - and it is kept open by a team of volunteer movie-lovers.

On Friday, a 50th celebratory screening of Jaws which also premiered in 1975, was held which Dan Champion, programme and managing director of the cinema, said he had been "very excited" about.

Dan Champion said he had been very excited for the anniversary

The two-screen venue opened as the Ipswich Film Theatre in 1975.

The cinema was previously run as a subsidised venue by Ipswich Borough Council until 2008.

The ruling Conservatives at the time handed it over to the Hollywood chain when it struggled to bring in money amid council cutbacks, and it then closed when Hollywood gave it up.

Volunteer campaigners managed to reopen it in 2010 and it has been running ever since, albeit on fewer days per week, and with a closure during the Covid lockdowns from 2020.

Mr Champion, who was also celebrating his own 50th birthday, said the cinema had been a "cultural fixture of cinema in Ipswich for successive audiences".

"It's a very important venue in that regard, considering the lack of cultural cinema in East Anglia," he added.

"This has been a venue that has shown independent, British and foreign language cinema and we continue to do that."

Those at the event on Friday enjoyed shark-themed cupcakes and cocktails.

The cinema on King Street originally opened as the Ipswich Film Theatre in 1975

Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg and its legendary music composed by John Williams, was first released in June 1975.

It tells the story of when a shark unleashed chaos on a beach community leaving many generations shared of the animals.

It won three Oscars, including for its score, and it became the first movie to gross over $100m at the US box office.

Mr Champion said he believed the film "changed the course of cinema".

"If you go right back to the beginning, everything comes from something else, whether it's novels, paintings, writing, film," he explained.

"Everybody in each successive generation learns from those who came before and I think this is a film that everybody still learns about today.

"It is still discussed in film circles as an incredibly influential film in the craft of filmmaking."

He added it was an "exceptionally well told" film which had "stood the test of time".