Plan to tackle film society membership

Timaru Film Society memberships hit 180 this year and an extra screening is on the cards if numbers continue to swell ahead of the 2019 season.

With 145 full members and 35 people opting for the three-film sampler deal, the audience for 15 films screened throughout the year in Movie Max Digital’s 110-seat theatre averaged 71.

Society president Ross Stevenson said as his team became less ‘‘conservative’’ in testing the balance between theatre capacity and memberships, they were poised to introduce an afternoon screening alongside the evening one if numbers broke 200.

‘‘If there’s demand we can meet that demand, so we want to see what that demand is,’’ Stevenson said.

Money left over from the first season, coupled with more memberships, would pay for those extra screenings, he said.

Next year would see the number of films shown jump to 18 while the year-long membership price would stay at $100.

‘‘We want to continue that variety of international films and new-ish films from three, four, five years ago – along with some classics,’’ he said.

‘‘If you look at the season, as a whole, the majority of people were quite satisfied.’’

The line-up for next year was yet to be decided, a list of 25 out of 40 favourites having been sent to the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies (NZFFS) to organise, but Stevenson was especially hopeful a selection of French-African films made it to town.

‘‘Looking at the full list there might only be one or two that wouldn’t work for Timaru,’’ he said. Timaru members are entitled to free admission to the screenings of any of the 15 NZFFS-affiliated film societies around the country.

The society’s second season will kick off in March 2019 with a move to Monday nights at 7pm to better fit the the needs of Movie Max.