Smoovie is a new cultural initiative founded in Wales by Nadia Gillard and Will Tremlett.
Our mission is to make it easy for every town and village to have high-quality cinema.
Not by building new cinemas, but by helping local places become part-time cinemas: community halls, pubs, cafés, galleries, theatres, youth spaces and climate hubs can all enjoy new-release independent films that strengthen the fabric of our communities.
Film culture should not only belong to cities - it should belong to towns, villages and local people too.
Community hubs and local hospitality businesses bring life to our towns and villages, and going to a film screening at one of these places is a great way to show your support. When you buy a ticket, bring someone with you, share a screening or make cinema part of your week, you show them that cinema is something you want in the fabric of community life. Smoovie can bring films to local places, but cinema only becomes part of community life when people show up.
Screenings are designed to be affordable, with tickets usually starting at £5 and a £3 concession for under 30s. Some venues may charge more to cover higher overheads, but the aim is to always remove cost as a barrier to communal film experiences.
Cinema is about getting out of the house and being with people! Laughing together, sitting quietly together, talking afterwards, bumping into neighbours, meeting new people and sharing an experience that might stay with you for a lifetime.
If your local space already shows films through Smoovie, please support the screenings when you can. If there’s nobody local using us, mention Smoovie to a venue, community group, organiser or councillor, especially if you would like to help run screenings yourself. Smoovie is currently free for venues to use, with platform costs covered through ticket booking fees and distributors paid through door splits, so local organisers can explore regular cinema without upfront licence costs and complexity.
On-the-door tickets are currently card only unless the screening is listed as a free event. We do not support cash payments yet, but we are working on this, as we know that cash is still king in many rural areas. We need to work this through carefully with our industry partners, who need clear and transparent box office reporting.
For online ticketing issues, email [email protected]. For venue-specific questions such as access, parking, seating, food and drink or timings, please contact the venue directly. Please read our terms before booking.
We do not currently offer refunds. If you are unhappy with a screening event, it is best to speak to the venue first. If it cannot be resolved, please email support. Venues can issue Smoovie exchange tokens, which can be used at future screenings when paying on the door, though not yet online.
Smoovie helps local places become part-time cinemas.
We support community halls, cafés, pubs, galleries, youth spaces, climate hubs, theatres, music venues and local organisers to set up regular cinema in their area.
The dream: Every town and village should be able to gather around great films and have film culture.
Smoovie provides venues with the digital system to run cinema easily: public booking pages, ticketing, QR check-in, audience emails, sales reporting, marketing support, training and simple playback for Smoovie-programmed films.
Smoovie is not about locking venues into one programme. It is about making cinema easier, more repeatable and more enjoyable to run.
You can use Smoovie-programmed films, add your own licensed screenings, or do both.
Each week, Smoovie makes one curated film available to our members on simple door-split terms. That means you don’t pay a hefty upfront licence for Smoovie-programmed titles, so if only a handful of people show up, you’re not in the red! You choose the films that suit your audience, set your screening date, sell tickets through Smoovie, and ticket income is shared after the screening so that venues and rights holders are fairly compensated. Every now and again we even programme social and environmental films that can also be shown for free!
If you already book films through another licensing route such as Cinema For All, Filmbank, Flicks in the Sticks or Moviola, you can add these events to your Smoovie account and use the same public listing, ticketing, QR check-in, audience communication and reporting tools.
Cinema can bring children, young people, families, working adults, older audiences, Welsh speakers, visitors and local groups together in one shared space.
If you have projection equipment installed, it’s technically straightforward compared to live events, and with Smoovie it becomes seamless.
It creates a sense of local pride and adds life to a town or village, supports nearby cafés, pubs and restaurants, and creates a cultural event people talk about afterwards.
Our programme unlocks the potential for weekly community cinema with the flexibility of adding your own titles via other licensing routes.
We’re knowledgeable about grassroots venues, having been involved in several ourselves, and can help you overcome any obstacles in setting up. From running your first screenings to building a local audience to dealing with issues if they arise.
Our thoughtfully built digital system, designed whilst running community screenings ourselves, means the system is purpose built with all the niggles worked out. We’re also building new features all the time so if you need something added you can tell us and we’ll think about building it in.
Smoovie helps venues turn cinema into a low-risk, income-generating activity.
Regular screenings can help generate unrestricted income, support volunteer-run buildings, bring extra trade into cafés and pubs, raise funds for community groups, or help pay a local promoter to run screenings.
We’ve built a simple way for people with no film background or understanding of complex licensing or industry jargon to bring local people together for an intimate, high-quality film experience.
We realise that some organisers are ready to go immediately, others are just thinking about the idea, some just need a nudge. Whichever camp you sit in, get in touch via the email below to book a 1:1 online meeting with us and we can advise on the next steps!
Email:
[email protected]
Smoovie is on a mission to bring cinema back to every town and village in Wales.
We want a future where cinema culture is within walking distance for local people, be it a café, an arts space, an independent theatre, youth centre or the community building down the road.
We’ve built a lightweight digital system to help make that possible in a transparent way.
We’ve frequently been told that independent films struggle to reach rural and lower-population audiences. Not because those audiences do not care, but because the current routes are often too fragmented. A single screening in a village hall can be hard to manage, report and justify. Multiply that across dozens of places, and the admin can easily outweigh the return.
With Smoovie, it’s one point of contact, one booking and one file transfer. Then watch as the screenings pour in. The numbers per screening are usually modest, but as a whole it usually becomes worth it.
If you’d like to find out whether it can work screening your title with Smoovie, get in touch via the email below!
Smoovie is not here to replace the organisations already working hard to support film culture, community cinema, audience development, education, festivals, venues and local access to screenings.
What we’re trying to do is lower the barrier to entry by providing a flexible and modern digital system that’s fun and accessible.
By providing a base programme, organisers always have something to screen on a simple door split, making it more likely they keep showing films. For organisers that want more choice, Smoovie can sit alongside existing booking and licensing routes, as externally licensed titles can be easily added as a listing making use of the same ticketing, marketing and reporting tools.
Most organisers will probably do both: use Smoovie-programmed films to keep a regular rhythm, fill gaps and discover new titles, then add their own listings when they want more choice, local relevance or special events but keep a consistent system.
We are on a mission to bring cinema back to every town and village in Wales. If you are a filmmaker, distributor, venue, cinema organisation, Film Hub, council, funder, installer, community group or partner who wants to help make that happen, please get in touch.
We are based in Wales, so we hold most meetings online.
Email: [email protected]
Smoovie is a project by creative duo Will Tremlett and Nadia Gillard, based in Machynlleth, Mid Wales.
Our project brings together our experiences in film, community cinema, local arts, hospitality, grassroots marketing, youth projects, and technical know-how.
“Until only a few decades ago there was a cinema in basically every small town. Now the only places that show good independent films on time are in cities. I think there’s a huge opportunity for filmmakers to get their work seen more widely in rural areas.”
“Cinema is fun and brings such a lovely energy to a space. I think front of house is so important in making sure people come back, whether it’s cinema or any other activity, people need to feel comfortable, looked after and valued.”
Will works as a filmmaker, community cinema person and a bit of a techy. His latest work on Portuguese feature film Kiss and Be Friends is currently touring film festival circuits.
Having grown up in Machynlleth and run touring cinema in village halls across Mid Wales, Will knows all about rural cinema. His role in Smoovie is to get the programme in, make sure people are paid on time and do whatever techy stuff needs doing.
Nadia’s background is in hospitality with a long CV of working in a range of establishments from small independent businesses to large chains. In 2025 she also graduated from Coleg Menai with an Art Foundation Degree.
Nadia supports the way things look and feel: how venues promote their events, welcome audiences, build confidence and create a good experience from the first poster to the end of the screening.