Less than two months since the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre was badly damaged by fire, and eventually torn down, a film will be played in the small town. It will be in the form of a drive-in on Saturday night.
As part of a way to show it was back and bring a movie to the community, the committee which runs the centre will screen New Zealand production Tina on Saturday night at the Roxburgh Rugby Club grounds.
The committee got the ball rolling on the idea of getting a movie shown just days after the fire on Waitangi Day.
"It is all set to go and we will just take it as we go. But everyone has been really keen and wants to know what is happening with the cinema," Roxburgh Entertainment Centre and improvements committee chairman Curtis Crawford said.
The weather forecast was promising, and the hired screen — 7.3m x 3.1m — was to be located on the road side of the ground to prevent glare from the sun.
It had needed to be quite precise in locating the screen so people could not watch the film when driving past on State Highway 8, Mr Crawford said.
People would be encouraged to bring along a bean bag or chair to view the movie.
A donation of any kind would be payment for the movie.
He was confident of getting a good crowd for the event, which would start about 8pm.
The next step in getting a new building was to form a stakeholders group, which the Central Otago District Council had requested, he said.
People in Roxburgh were keen to get a cinema back up and running, to have a large space for people to gather.
Over winter, he was thinking of showing some movies at the Sunday School hall on Scotland St. It held about 60 people.
The centre had been insured for $6.5 million, though about $220,000 of that had been spent in the tidy-up.
The cinema group had its own insurance of about $450,000.
Films had been screening at the entertainment centre for almost 130 years, making it the oldest continuously operating movie theatre in the southern hemisphere — and the second oldest in the world. It seated 258 people.
