news films, as well as cartoons.

In 1937, the cinema became the home of the Tyneside Film Society, the origin of the Tyneside Cinema itself which, by the late 1950s, had grown into the largest film society in the UK outside London. The popularity of television led to a decline in audiences and consequently the cinema was closed in 1968. After a brief period, it was reopened as a film theatre by the BFI. The cinema closed again in 1975. A case for re-opening the cinema, then known as the Tyneside Film Theatre, was put together by the