At 7pm that evening there was a special screening of a newsreel about the sinking of the Titanic on 15 April, shown to help raise funds for the Lord Mayor's appeal. The Curzon seated 200 people and its first projector used gas as there was no electricity in the town yet. Over the next few years there were improvements to the seating and the projector was converted to run on electricity.
 | | Inside the auditorium |
Its capacity was increased to nearly 400 and a sliding roof installed which could be used to ventilate the auditorium during the intermission. 'Community cinema' The Curzon's organ is believed to have been removed when the cinema was equipped to play movies with sound. It changed hands - and its name to the Maxime - after the Second World War. Then after being sold again in 1953 it changed its name back to the Curzon. It was saved from closure in 1996 by a group of enthusiasts, and has been run since as a community cinema. Despite its history the Curzon likes to keep up-to-date. A grant from the UK Film Council is to fund a state-of-the-art digital projector. The new digital equipment will also help support local film makers, schools and youth clubs by screening locally-made films. It's hoped in the future the cinema will be able to offer access to a wide selection of educational films, classic & archive material, foreign language films and specialised short films which normally wouldn't reach a wide enough audience. The digital "films" will arrive on disc, by cable or even satellite transmissions. Its claimed the image quality could be as good as, if not better than celluloid. For a comprehensive history of the Curzon click on the link to the cinema's website at the top right of the page. | 
