03/09/2008

Going to the cinema may soon become as easy for people living in rural Scotland as it is for their urban counterparts, following the appointment of a former deputy director of the Edinburgh Filmhouse to a newly-created body dedicated to delivering cinema throughout the country’s more isolated communities.

Ron Inglis is the first director of Regional Screen Scotland - set up by Scottish Screen and Highlands and Islands arts journal, HI~Arts.

Thanks to increasing availability of digital screening equipment, he remarked: “The creation of Regional Screen Scotland is a wonderful opportunity to work with local and national partners to develop more and better cinema-going outside the city areas.
 
“I’m particularly interested in the ways that new digital cinema technologies are changing how smaller town and rural cinemas can operate. I hope that we can provide the practical support and specialist advice to cinemas, arts centres, film societies and festivals which will enable them to inspire audiences with great cinema-going.”
 
Adds Ken Hay, chief executive of Scottish Screen: “The formation of Regional Screen Scotland is the final part of the jigsaw in the implementation of Scottish Screen’s fresh approach to cinema exhibition launched in March [last year], which has, at its core, support for access to the broadest range of films for Scotland’s diverse populations.”

Inglis brings 30 years’ experience in the cinema to the job. As an independent consultant and researcher, he has worked for local authorities throughout the UK, Scottish Screen, the British Film Institute, the UK Film Council, the Arts Councils of Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales.

At St Andrews University, he ran the student film society. During the 1980s he was deputy director of Filmhouse in Edinburgh. He obtained his Master of Business Administration degree at Edinburgh University in 1990.

Between 2002 and last year, he was a member of the board of Dundee Contemporary Arts. He is the author of the recent Scottish Screen publication, ‘Tentpoles and Pixels: Developing a Local Digital Cinema’.


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