Arena 7, Hunts Bank
1 sound
Arena 7 is one of the newer cinemas on our walk. Only in operation between December 1996 and October 2000, it has changed usage from a call centre office to an indoor go-karting area since the cinema’s closure. Opening as a 7-screen multiplex with the capacity to hold over 1500 people at a time, its short life was attributed to competition from other multiplexes in the city.
Positioned tucked away in Victoria train station cannot have helped in its accessibility to the public. Staff and attendees recall it mostly being empty during those four years. Some of it final screenings were Billy Elliot, Hollow Man and Scary Movie.
In an attempt to move back to the heyday of film and talk less about its sad decline in more recent times, Reginald Molloy recalls an evocative account of a childhood absorbed in cinema. His father joined Twentieth Century Fox Film and owned several small theatres around Greater Manchester. This anecdote is concerned which films he recalls most vividly from being taken to the cinema by his mother and waiting in the orchestra pit whilst his parents worked.
Image: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/25897 NB. UOSH do not own the copyright to this image.
