Regular festival goers and Hay-on-Wye dwellers and visitors will be familiar with the Hay Cinema Bookshop. The old local cinema was converted to a second-hand bookshop in 1965. Nearly half a century later a new cinema willopen in another book store, perhaps town’s most famous, Richard Booth’s Bookshop. In an elegant twist of fate it was Richard Booth that converted the original cinema to a bookshop, his first in Hay.
The new cinema with leather seating from Paris and boasting superb picture and sound will screen an eclectic programme of films from original silent movies, musicals, world cinema to current blockbusters. The ‘Brook Street Cinema’ as it will be styled will also invite public suggestions for movies to schedule. The cinema will open the week before the festival for the Hay Film School Weekend an extravaganza of screenings, Q&As and workshops.
No doubt festival goers will be given a suitably eclectic selection to complement the official programme of events.
MAKING HAY at the Hay Festival 
Shame its not styled as the ‘Brook Street Cinema’ in the Festival Programme. If we have to direct any more anxious and slightly confused cinema goers from the ‘Hay Cinema Bookshop’ to the ‘Bookshop Cinema’ ……. we might start to think its deliberate … Deb Clark Hay Cinema Bookshop
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