Abergavenny Film Society 2025-2026 Season Case Study

• To provide an accessible big-screen community cinema screening UK Independent and International feature films.
• To provide a social environment for members and non-members with an emphasis on social inclusion.
• To support independent filmmakers.
• To provide a programme of films depicting a wide range of themes and cultures. Our programme included Welsh Language, LGBTQIA+ themes, minority language (Laos), ethnic diversity (Laos)(India).

• Memoir of a Snail (Australia)
• Santosh (India)
• The Marching Band (France)
• I’m Still Here (Brazil)
• Vermiglio (Italy)
• When Autumn Falls (France)
• Satu – Year of The Rabbit (Laos)
• All We Imagine as Light (India)
• Past Lives (South Korea)
• Unmoored (Sweden)
• Fires of The Moon (Wales)
• Four Mothers (Ireland)

For the 2025-2026 Season, we were proud to present a selection of films that we considered to be diverse and of a high standard.

We are also proud of being one of the longest established Film Societies in Wales and that our popularity has been increasing steadily over the past few years. This is evident in our attendance figures for non-members and the increasing demand for membership places. Our admissions were 1368, averaging 114 per screening. Around 78% of these audiences were society members and 22% were non-members who booked tickets for individual screenings

Things ran fairly smoothly during the season apart from having to reschedule one date due to complete heating breakdown at our venue in January. On another occasion we had a problem with a secure digital offline screening that resulted in us having to make a short-notice change to our programme.

It can be difficult to attract younger people to screenings although we have noticed an improvement during the most recent season. We plan to include some films such as Effi O Blaenau in our next season that will appeal to a younger audience.

Because some of the films were available only by secure digital offline screening, this proved to be expensive and the funding was very helpful to us in covering these extra costs along with other increased licence fees and various other costs.

We evaluate audience reactions to films by inviting them to rate the films and were delighted to receive a lot of positive feedback with references to our choices of film, the social and community aspects we provide and our general organisation. Audience members really appreciated having the opportunity to see high standard independent films from all over the world in an inclusive social environment. They also appreciated having the opportunity to comment on the films by email after the screenings and to be able to rate them A-E. We worked out a percentage score for each film and fed that back to the audience along with a short selection of comments. We were also delighted to see increased popularity of our society compared to the previous season This was evident in the number of membership applications we received and the rate at which we received them. It was encouraging to see many new audience members and to receive positive feedback from them.

We know that the social aspects of our society are attractive to many of our audience members. We were able to run our own licensed café bar at the venue and people were keen to discuss the films there. Also, we held a special social event at Christmas between the screenings of the Irish comedy, Four Mothers, which proved to be popular with audience members. The venue we use is an arts centre and it’s clear that many of our audience members become involved in other community groups that use the centre or attend events at the centre.

We realised that we needed to become more familiar with the use of secure digital offline screenings. As mentioned in a previous section, we encountered some unexpected technical challenges which resulted in a short-notice change to our programme. We were relieved to be able to overcome the problems eventually.