Chair's Annual Report 2020-2021
It has been a sad year for Keswick Film Club, dominated by delays, cancellations and suspension due to Covid, but also a hopeful time with the relaunched Alhambra to start our new year.
We managed to start the year on time, albeit with 'social distancing' in the cinema limiting our audiences to around 90 maximum. By November we were forced to close down all together; December we were back for 3 weeks! In January this year we got as far as booking films for the month but then had to cancel these and we have not been open again.
The good news for Keswick was the arrival of Jonathan Moore who has now become a director of the Alhambra alongside the Rennies. They have invested both money time and effort to such an extent that, when the cinema opens again in October, the Alhambra will not only have a second screen but a bar in the new Foyer as well. We should thank Jonathan along with the Rennies and all those wonderful volunteers who have helped along the way. As I write this, the Alhambra is still closed but the renovations are close to completion, and we can look forward to an exciting year in our ‘new’ home. Thanks to all those who helped.
All this disruption has obviously left us with very odd figures for the year, the largest audience being only 83 and only 10 films being shown. We have proved that we can survive a major problem though, abandoning our brochure and our season passes for the time being as we booked films a month at a time, swapping our ticketing to the Alhambra booking system and our voting system to an online one along the way. We gave free membership to all existing members, even though there was no membership cards produced and we even held the AGM on Zoom. We will have to continue most of this for the time being, although we are bringing back Membership (and the AGM) – please pay online if you can.
The Film Festival was another casualty of Covid but again Ian Payne has booked Keswick Film Festival 2022 from 24 March to 27 March; fingers crossed.
The only good news from the year is that we are still in good financial position having spent so little... The full accounts will be presented asap - they are awaiting the Accountant signoff at the moment - but at the end of year, we closed with £26653 cash, but owing £3054 in bills ( there are many outstanding invoices due to everyone being closed down for the year ), leaving a net balance of £23599. This is a loss of only £394; given we had such small audiences and no Membership income this was a lot less than we had budgeted for.
A strange and hopefully, unique year for Keswick Film Club (not to mention the whole world). Let us hope that this coming year does not lead to more lock downs so that our next year will be a celebration of 'back to normal' in our new Alhambra!
Vaughan Ames, Chair