A Short History of the Village Theatre
In 1927 a grand ball was held to celebrate the opening of the Takaka Cinema, now the premises of the Wholemeal Café. This original movie theatre ran for forty years until it closed in 1967, unable to compete with the arrival of TV in Golden Bay in the early ‘60s.
For twenty years Takaka was a town without a cinema, until 1984, when John Law began to show 16mm films, fortnightly, at the High School. When this was forced to end due to unruly behaviour in the school grounds, Gerard Hindmarsh & Melanie Walker purchased the Dalgetty's grain store and set about converting it into a cinema. Equipment was purchased for $1,000 from the Central Theatre at Papatoetoe, installed with the help of a large amount of voluntary labour, and the Village Theatre was born! The first film shown was the animated feature, Footrot Flats. After the cinema in Karamea burnt down, the Village Theatre had, for many years, the distinction of being the smallest cinema in NZ.
In 1990, the enterprise was bought out by a charitable trust which evolved into the Village Theatre Incorporated Society, a not for profit organisation that by 1994 had 80 members. It was 1997 that saw the first major upgrade with new seats, screen, 35mm projector, sound system, curtains and carpet being purchased from the Metro Theatre in Christchurch, roof insulation installed and a new interior paint job. The budget for this was $25,000, raised from donations, fundraising events and interest free loans from local sponsors. It took volunteers two weeks to complete the job.
In 2005, a new screen was installed along with a surround sound system that incorporates a central sub bass speaker which is what shakes the floor when King Kong lands on the ground! 2006 saw comfortable new seating purchased and installed from donations and voluntary labour and in 2007, a grant to cover the purchase of a state of the art DVD projector completed the Village Theatre's evolution into a comfortable high tech entertainment venue.
The Golden Bay community have every right to be proud. It is through their ongoing support in the form of patronage, sponsorship, membership, voluntary labour, donations, fundraisers, raffles, garage sales, events, auctions etc. etc. that has enabled the Village Theatre to survive and become what is is today.