Your
Belmont
Memories

"The best Belmont screenings were always the ones spearheaded by communal love of a classic film or franchise that would bring audiences together but would be far too imposing an ask for your typical multiplex branch. A few of these were put on by Dallas and his team during his time as marketing manager. Of the events in this class, the absolute best was when original 35mm copies of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy were screened one pre-Christmas Sunday. As someone who will confess only having seen the extended version of Fellowship before this event seeing a sold-out Screen One enraptured in Sam and Frodo’s 10-hour journey to Mordor truly was magical.

Seeing such an awe-inspiring piece of cinema in full for the first time felt truly unmatched for the Aberdeen film scene before or since By the time Return of the King got through its 15 endings and Annie Lennox played over the cast credits for the trilogy as a whole the spontaneous round of applause that greeted the end of the journey felt so well deserved.

Not only in how masterful the films are as a 10 hour odyssey but how effectively the Belmont team had been able to pull off such a memorable screening of the kind rarely seen in Aberdeen."

"On my first ever visit to the Belmont I was lucky enough to be shown around the venue and also the projection booths by a kind Duty Manager/Projectionist (a lovely chap by the name of Dallas King, I believe!). I will never forget it. It was amazing to see all of the specialised 35mm equipment that the cinema has retained alongside the more modern, digital kit.

The Belmont still has all of this in place today and it remains the only cinema for miles around with the capability of screening 35mm. It must re-open and do so again to hand down this important aspect of cinema history, allow Aberdonians to experience film screenings on real film, and inspire future projectionists and cinephiles!"

"It was a packed house in Cinema 1 for the showing of Nae Pasaran. The Belgian film maker had recreated the story of the East Kilbride Rolls Royce engineers who boycotted the refurb of planes Pinochet planned to use against the supporters of Allende in 1970s Chile. The film maker himself and one of the engineers was present for the Q&A afterwards and the chat could have gone on long after the designated hour.

One of the things the Belmont does best or uniquely in Aberdeen is bringing film makers and actors to the city to be part of the cinema experience, to share their thoughts with the public and inspire future creatives. A fantastic night never to be forgotten."

"An abiding memory I keep of the Belmont Cinema was going on my 21st birthday (in the year 2001, no less) to see 2001: A Space Odyssey. I had just graduated from film school, and Kubrick’s seminal classic had always been my favourite film, but until this point, I had never seen it projected.

This was one of many of the classic films I would go to see regularly, over the years, at the Belmont, and the sense that one was being given access to older films, presented as they were intended to be seen, by people who actually cared about film as an art-form and in our culture, was profound.

From Kurosawa, to Capra, to Ozu to Welles and beyond, from midnight screenings to premieres (where they also very kindly screened one of my earliest efforts as a screenwriter) the Belmont gave us that access and for those few hours it was as good as a time machine."