RESIDENTS have been celebrating the reopening of Market Hall Cinema by visiting in their thousands and breaking boxoffice records.

After months of hard work, negotiation and protests by members of the community, Brynmawr’s Market Hall Cinema was saved from closure.

Following a campaign Blaenau Gwent council handed over the cinema two weeks ago as part of a Community Asset Transfer to the newly formed Market Hall Brynmawr Community Group, a combination of the previous Save our Cinema and Market Hall Cinema Trust groups.

Blaenau Gwent council had previously voted to withdraw funding from the cinema, the oldest continuously- running cinema in Wales, in March and had proposed closing the venue to save £300,000 in a bid to deal with its £3.9million deficit.

Following the handover, the cinema reopened on June 27, after a three-week closure for essential maintenance works to take place.

At the reopening, which featured a special preview screening of Despicable Me 2, more than 1,000 people turned up to watch the film in the newly refurbished and modernised cinema.

The cinema will be run as a community enterprise, run for the community by the community.

Spokesman for the group, Peter Watkins-Hughes, said: “Since we opened the cinema it has been doing unbelievably well.

“Our opening weekend broke our previous box office record – the last time we had 1,000 people in was 10 years ago for the second Harry Potter film. In the past week we’ve had around 2,000 visitors, which is fantastic.

“I think people have now realised they have this great facility, with ridiculously low prices, on their doorstep, and they are now starting to take full advantage of that.”

The cinema opened in 1894 and has played host to not just films, but the local operatic society, a library and even boxing matches.