Lights out at arthouse cinema after court order

DUBLIN’S LIGHT House cinema told customers yesterday it had closed after the High Court earlier wound up its operating company which was unable to pay rent on the building.

Ms Justice Mary Laffoy made the order winding up the arthouse cinema in Smithfield, which opened in May 2008, and adjourned the matter to the High Court examiner’s list next month.

The application to wind up the operating company, Light House Cinema Exhibition and Cinema Distribution Co Ltd, was made last month by the landlord John Flynn of Fusano Properties. Rent had recently risen from €100,000 to €200,000 per year.

The cinema’s website said yesterday: “Light House Cinema is now closed. On behalf of all of the former staff of the cinema, we would like to sincerely thank everybody who has supported us over the last three years.”

Neil Connolly, who co-managed the cinema with Maretta Dillon, said: “We were surprised that our exhaustive – and exhausting – attempts to reach a settlement with the landlord were unsuccessful. We made serious attempts to negotiate. We even suggested mediation. We are amazed that no flexibility whatsoever was on show.”

Mr Flynn told The Irish Timeshe needed the money to meet obligations to the National Asset Management Agency. Mr Connolly conceded the rent increase was part of an agreement signed before the cinema opened in 2008.

“If there is any criticism due to us it is that we signed up to the deal in the first place,” Mr Connolly said. “In hindsight, it doesn’t look like a very sensible thing to have done in 2007. When we signed up to this, Smithfield, as imagined, was to become an entirely different place.”

The cinema, saddled with outstanding rent payments of €156,856, is yet another casualty of deals done during the boom years. In 2008, when The Light House opened, it still seemed possible that the Smithfield development might become a thrusting, upmarket area.

“Things have been getting much better,” Mr Connolly said. “We’ve cut costs steadily. We’ve been growing the audience. The first months of 2011 were a lot better than 2010. The financial position was improving, but we could never get to the point where we would be able to pay €200,000 in 2011.”

The original Light House Cinema, also run by Mr Connolly and Ms Dillon, opened on Abbey Street in 1988. From that time, until its lease ran out in 1996, the cinema screened work by such emerging talents as Terence Davies, Ang Lee and Jane Campion. Cinema-goers will remember an old-school, intimate arthouse cinema, very different from the gleaming, beautifully appointed building designed by DTA architects for Smithfield.

For some time it was believed the pair would reopen the cinema in the International Financial Services Centre. But they eventually opted for Smithfield.

“We had no financial resources,” Mr Connolly said at the new Light House’s launch. “What drove the possibility of it happening in Smithfield was the planning permission Fusano Properties got for their flagship development, a crucial element in Dublin City Council’s strategic planning. It required Fusano to provide 80,000sq ft of cultural space.”

Ironically, it was Fusano Properties who filed the winding-up order against the cinema.

The Light House, the construction of which was financed by the Cultural Cinema Consortium, a partnership between the Irish Film Board and the Arts Council, was received enthusiastically by cinema-goers. Although no digital projection facilities were then in place, a €200,000 grant from the Arts Council’s cinema digitisation scheme later rectified this.

The Light House, with it overpowering, white public spaces and cinemas with brightly coloured seats, offered a singular cinema-going experience.

The future of the venue, which has received close to €2 million in public funding, is uncertain. Planning permission dictates that the building must remain an arthouse cinema. Mr Flynn has claimed that two cinema operators have approached him with a mind to taking over the venue.