Cinema cash bid for Oswestry

A bid for cash to help fund a new cinema in Oswestry has been made to stem the flow of town residents travelling to Shrewsbury and Wrexham to see new films.

Film-screening company KinoKulture has bid for £50,000 from the Market Towns Revitalisation Programme. It wants to buy digital projection equipment for the Attfield Theatre at the Guidlhall in Bailey Head and hope to hear whether they have been successful in the next few weeks.

If the bid is successful the equipment should be set up by March. It means box-office films will be brought to the town ahead of the creation of a cinema in the supermarket complex on the town's livestock market site.

Ruth Carter, the company's film programmer, said: "The new digital system would give us the ability to show all sorts of films including those screening at local multiplex cinemas as well as the opportunity to screen alternative content such as Opera Live From The Met and productions from The National Theatre."