In 2012, Orkney resident Mark Jenkins was tasked with looking into
developing a film festival for locals, with support from Orkney Islands
Council and Visit Orkney. General feedback that Mark received over the next
year was that there wasn’t really a local appetite for a temporary film event
– without a local core audience and local support, any film festival would
struggle to survive and ultimately fail. As a response, Mark decided to develop a permanent community cinema as a way of building that local audience and creating an appetite for film across Orkney.