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General Meetings Minutes
How To Join or Renew Your Membership

Welcome

The Friends of the Hyde Park Picture House is a registered charity made up of a group of people who enjoy cinema and feel some way connected to the Hyde Park Picture House. We want as many, and as wide a range of people as possible to be able to experience the same enjoyment through it that we do.

We are now accepting renewals and new members to our ‘Pay What You Decide’ membership scheme. Follow these links to find out How To Join, see our Frequently Asked Questions and why we made Changes To Memberships.

The Picture House also have their own membership schemes.

Latest Posts

Special General Meeting

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Monday 8 September 7pm
Community Space Upper Floor of Hyde Park Picture House

Unfortunately there was not a quorum for our Annual General Meeting on the 10th of August so we will be holding a short Special General Meeting on Monday 8th September at 7pm to formally approve the recommendations made at the AGM.

As per our constitution the quorum will be the number of people attending after 15 minutes rather than a set figure.

You will need to be a member to vote at the Special Meetings but you can join now online or in person before the meeting for as little as a pound.

An initial draft of the minutes from the inquorate AGM are now available online.

More Details

Annual General Meeting 2025

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Sunday 10th August from 2pm
Hyde Park Picture House Screen 2

Our Annual General Meeting covering the financial year from April 2024-25 will be taking place in Screen 2 at the Picture House on Sunday 10th August after a screening of Gianni Di Gregorio’s modern Italian classic Mid-August Lunch, “a wonderfully patient, delicately observed film; warm, generous, never for a moment sentimental or patronising, never exploiting dottiness and eccentricity” (The Observer).

“Mid-August Lunch is a film of rare benevolence that treats its subjects with dignity and playfulness.”
Catherine Shoard, The Guardian

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Schedule

  • 1:30pm – Doors open
  • 2pm – Film: Mid-August Lunch (U, 2008, 71mins) introduced by the Friends
  • 3:20pm – Break for refreshments and membership payments
  • 3:50pm – AGM
  • 5pm – AGM concludes

We would be glad to see as many of you as possible there but you will need to be signed up to our Pay What You Decide membership scheme in order to vote at the AGM. You can join online now or there should be opportunity to join in person during the refreshment break.

The agenda and links to the relevant documents can be found on the AGM 2025 page on our website.

If you are planning on attending please let us know by completing this form.

Links

May’s First Thursday

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Please join us on May 1st at 9pm onwards in the cinema bar to discuss all things film including but not exclusively Licorice Pizza which HPPH is screening as part of its Philosophy and Film strand that evening from 6pm.

Licorice Pizza has been selected by Dr. Colette Olive and will be followed by a short talk from Colette exploring the philosophical themes raised.

Tickets are already selling fast for this screening so we recommend booking if you want to join us.

‘First Thursday’ is our monthly meet up to give members and anyone interested in the Friends, or cinema in general, a chance to get together.

Please note: due to a licensing issue the screening will no longer be from 35mm and will be projected digitally.

April’s First Thursday

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Please join us on April 3rd at 8pm onwards in the cinema bar to discuss all things film. Some of us will be watching The End at 5:10pm and if you already have your tickets there should be time to say hello before the 8:20pm screening of La Cocina. Both of these films are screening all week along with more chances to see I’m Still Here, Santosh and Anora.

‘First Thursday’ is our monthly meet up to give members and anyone interested in the Friends, or cinema in general, a chance to get together.

Films of 2024

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As the Picture House staff and volunteers have announced their films of 2024 we thought it would be interesting to see what our members thought of 2024. Have they missed anything? Do you agree? What were your cinematic highlights of the year. Let us know in the comments below or use the contact us form to send us a message.

Number 4 in their list and one of our favourites is Perfect Days which is why we’ve decided to have it as our ‘Christmas’ Screening this year. We hope some of you can join us on Sunday 29th December for the 4pm screening and a chance to chat about the film, 2024 and what else you are looking forward to in 2025.

‘First Thursday’ Meetup – Kneecap

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Our new ‘First Thursday’ meet ups start on September 5th when a group of Friends plan to see the early evening film and meet in the bar afterwards to chat.

You may have had a trial run at this if you attended our successful Yorkshire Day screening on the first Thursday in August and shared your feelings about Lad, A Yorkshire Story on an exit post it. 

For September we’ve decided to focus on Kneecap, the “mostly true story” about the controversial Belfast hip-hop group of the same name, but there’ll be chance to talk about anything else you’ve seen.

We’ll be at the 6pm screening of Kneecap in Screen 2 on Thursday 5th September. The film is also screening every day at the Picture House so there are plenty of opportunities to see it before the 5th if you would just like to join us for the meetup, which will be around 8pm. 

The band have also just performed at the Reading and Leeds Festival and a 30 minute set is available to watch on iPlayer.

Come along, enjoy the cinema, meet other Friends and chat about films. 

Important Information About Friends Memberships

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Since 2020 we have kept all existing memberships of The Friends of Hyde Park Picture House active beyond their initial expiry dates. Now that the Picture House is open again with their own membership schemes, the Friends will be focussing more on our wider charitable aims and to better reflect this we have switched to a new Pay What You Decide membership model.

This means that if you have not already signed up for the new Friends scheme your existing membership (from pre 2020) will be coming to an end before our Annual General Meeting on Sunday 24th September 2023.

We hope you will sign up and continue to be a Friend. The Friends still have a vital part to play in celebrating the heritage and promoting the work of the cinema we all love.

All new Friends memberships will be valid until the end of 2024.

How To Become A Friend

Our Plans For The Future

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Now that the cinema has reopened we can’t wait to get on with some of our plans. We thought we would start with building up our team of online supporters and reviewers. Seen a good film lately?  Why not contribute a short review for our Facebook page or website? Hated a film? Tell us anyway!  Or let us know if you have an interesting piece of history or anecdote involving the Hyde Park Picture House. You can get in touch via the Contact Us form.  

Another of our priorities is outreach to local communities, and introducing people and organisations you may know to the the life of the Hyde Park Picture House. Tell us your ideas…

We would also like to be involved in putting on social events, discussions, quizzes, and special screenings; helping with cataloguing the Picture House archive; and commissioning a mural on the exterior back wall of the cinema (in Pearson Grove). But our activity depends on you, our members.

We will be discussing ideas and next steps at the Friends Annual General Meeting. The provisional date is on the afternoon of Sunday September 24th 2023 at the Hyde Park Picture House, we hope to confirm these details soon. You’ll need to (re)join the Friends in order to attend because any extended memberships from before the closure will come to an end before the AGM starts.