Made in East Anglia Festival Premiered Suffolk Folklore at Abbeygate

Abbeygate Cinema closed its second Made in East Anglia film festival on 5 September 2026 with a world premiere of volunteer-made Suffolk folklore.

The Bury St Edmunds picture house spent its 2025 season showing films that had used Suffolk and Norfolk as scenery. Year two opened on a new comedy shot at Somerleyton Hall and ended on stories the county wrote for itself.

Abbeygate Brought the Festival Back for a Second Summer

The 2026 edition ran from 20 August to 5 September, 17 days in the three-screen house on Hatter Street, and Butterworth & Son, the Bury coffee roasters and tea smiths, came back as main sponsor. Gareth Boggis, the cinema’s general manager, said the first year had been a learning curve and that live introductions would sit at the centre of the return.

Last year was a brilliant experience and a huge learning curve, but having had such wonderful feedback, it’s an event we were determined to bring back. This year sees events with live aspects taking centre stage, in some cases quite literally.

Gareth Boggis, general manager, Abbeygate Cinema

Lady opened the run. Samuel Abrahams’s 95-minute mockumentary stars Sian Clifford as Lady Isabella, a lonely aristocrat who hires a struggling filmmaker to record her at “Ravenhyde Hall,” a house the production found at Somerleyton Hall near Lowestoft. Lady Lara Somerleyton, who owns the estate, said it was a privilege to host the crew. The film had gone into UK cinemas on 14 August, six days before the festival lights went up.

Beside that opener sat two older East Anglian titles Pat Church wanted on the bill, Peter Hall’s Akenfield and Witchfinder General, plus Tim Curtis’s river and coast documentaries, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Ex Machina with an introduction by Dr Tom McClelland of the University of Cambridge, and a Suffolk Shorts programme making its first visit to Bury.

YEAR TWO AGAINST YEAR ONE

Members paid £5 a screening in both years. The second season was three days shorter than the first, and it spent the extra attention on people walking on stage rather than on another Bond reprint.

Nine Suffolk Tales Premiered on Hatter Street

On 4 September FILM Suffolk gave Abbeygate the first public screening of Once Upon a Time in Suffolk, its third volunteer feature. Producers put out a folklore script call in March 2023, took in about 100 submissions, and made the film with more than 200 people from across East Anglia. Julien Mery, 44, produced it with Nick Woolgar and Matthew McGuchan. John Row, the storyteller, introduced the chapters, and a Q&A followed the credits.

FOLKLORE ON THE BILL

• Black Shuck: The East Anglian hellhound, including the 1577 account of a beast breaking into a Bungay church and killing two people.
• Green Children of Woolpit: The twelfth-century pair with green skin, found in the village around 1150.
• Red Riding Hood: A county twist on the fairytale, with a Lowestoft setting in one chapter.
• Rapunzel: Reworked in Dedham Vale, alongside other fairytales cut with local legend.

Mery said the county would have been poorly served if the group had skipped that material, and that the open call turned up myths the producers themselves had not known.

Suffolk is so rich in folklore, myths and legends. We thought we would really do the county a disservice if we didn’t give a nod to that.

Julien Mery, producer, FILM Suffolk

The FILM Suffolk folklore anthology page is the production’s own home for the project. After Bury, the film went on to the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft on 30 September and is due at Firstsite in Colchester on 9 October. The people pushing those dates were the makers who needed a screen, which is the quiet change year two made: Abbeygate was no longer only borrowing other companies’ location work.

How a 1924 Picture House Held the Region

The building that hosted the premiere has shown moving images on Hatter Street since 1924, when it opened as the Central Cinema, a music hall that slipped films in between the acts. It is 102 years old this year, still independent, and still one of the few UK houses that can put 35mm through a gate.

A CENTURY ON HATTER STREET

1. 1924: Opens as the Central Cinema, a music hall with films between live acts.
2. 1959: Harold Miller buys the site and names it Abbeygate.
3. 1966: Pat Church starts as assistant projectionist, aged 19.
4. 1975: Church becomes manager and talks Star Group out of boarding the place up.
5. 2010: Digital projectors arrive after Picture House takes over.
6. 2021: The cinema reopens after Covid with a 180-seat Premier Screen.
7. 2024: Centenary year on Hatter Street.
8. 2025: First Made in East Anglia film festival, 22 August to 10 September.
9. 2026: Second festival, 20 August to 5 September, and Church’s 60 years at the cinema.

Ownership has changed 12 times while Church has stayed. The house now runs three auditoriums, a restaurant and a bar, and the Premier Screen is a stadium of 180 seats with 4K laser projection. That mix, old plaster and a big new screen, is why a folklore premiere and a 1974 village film can share a fortnight without either looking like a novelty booking.

Sixty Years in the Same Projection Room

Pat Church, now heritage and engagement manager, has worked at Abbeygate since 1966. Friends and staff marked 60 years of that service in April 2026. On 13 June he gave a talk billed around 65 years in the cinema industry, from silent-era 35mm up to 4K. He holds a British Empire Medal for services to the community, awarded in 2022.

He was introduced to a projection room at 10 and has said the job runs through his family: his uncle was a projectionist, his son is one, and he met his wife Geraldine at the cinema. She has put in 50 years of her own on Hatter Street. In 1975, when Star Group was preparing to close a small-town screen it did not want, he went in with a plan and kept the lights on.

It is a communal cinema because it belongs to the people. I know nearly everyone who comes here. It’s their cinema as much as ours.

Pat Church, heritage manager, Abbeygate Cinema

For the 2026 festival he introduced Akenfield and Witchfinder General himself. “Both hold a personal affection for me,” he said, “and both played a significant part in Abbeygate’s history.” Hall’s 1974 film was shot in villages west of Wickham Market with local people in the cast, a feature made like a documentary, which is close to what FILM Suffolk is doing 50 years later with unpaid crews and county legends. Church also still talks about 35mm as a softer image than digital, and the festival is one of the few local events that can still make that argument in the room where the projectors sit.

Elveden Hall, Angel Hill and Snape Marshes

East Anglia was a working backlot long before Abbeygate printed a festival flyer. Screen Suffolk, the county film office set up in 2016, has logged more than 1,000 filming days, and film officer Rachel Aldridge has put local spend at about £13,000 a day. Five days of The Personal History of David Copperfield in Bury St Edmunds alone left £82,500 in location fees, hotels and cafes, according to figures circulated in 2019.

FILMS SHOT ACROSS THE REGION

A Suffolk movie and TV locations trail already sends visitors from Thorpeness beach to Snape Maltings for The Dig, and from Halesworth High Street to the Ramsholt Arms bench in Yesterday. Elveden Hall has also stood in for New York interiors in Eyes Wide Shut and for later action pictures. The festival’s useful trick was to pull those sites off the tourist map and put them back on a cinema calendar, then, in year two, to add films that never needed a London office in the first place.

What Year One Put on the Marquee

The first Made in East Anglia festival ran from 22 August to 10 September 2025, 20 days of titles shot across Suffolk, Norfolk and nearby counties. Netflix’s The Dig brought dialect coach Charlie Haylock in for a live talk. Chicken Town was followed by a Q&A with director Richard Bracewell. The Personal History of David Copperfield used Bury as Dickensian London. Yesterday, Private Peaceful, Dean Spanley, A Cock and Bull Story (Felbrigg Hall), Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, The Rainbow Jacket at Newmarket, and The Living Daylights filled out the board, with Tim Curtis already in the building.

Abbeygate published 2025 festival listings and prices at a flat festival tariff.

2025 FESTIVAL PRICES

• Adult: £10 a ticket.
• Concession: £8.
• Young adult (15-24): £8.
• Child: £5.
• Members: £5, the rate that stayed for 2026.

Boggis said then that the fortnight was not about making money, and that he wanted people to see a couple of films, hear a speaker, and go home entertained. BBC Look East filmed at the cinema on launch morning, 22 August 2025, which is still the clearest public snapshot of the first edition.

Exciting to have @BBCLookEast filming with us this morning ahead of our Made In East Anglia film festival launch! Catch us at 6pm on BBC Look East 📺 pic.twitter.com/ZUud2LSxw1

— Abbeygate Cinema (@TheAbbeygate) August 22, 2025

Curtis came back in 2026 with the same local documentaries that had anchored 2025, including the Life on the Deben Q&A screening. Motion East, which had three titles in the 2026 season, treated Hatter Street as a release date. Suffolk Shorts screened on 1 September and has already booked 15 October at Abbeygate for EAST X EAST. That return date, and the folklore feature still moving through regional screens, is what year two leaves behind: a 102-year-old picture house with a season name, and a county that can now premiere its own work there instead of waiting for someone else’s crew to book the marshes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Abbeygate Cinema Still Show 35mm Film?

Yes. Abbeygate is one of the few UK cinemas that can still run 35mm, with the old projectors kept beside the digital machines, and Church has used them for cult-film nights because he prefers the softer look of photochemical prints to a 4K file.

Was The Dig Filmed at Sutton Hoo?

The burial mounds themselves were recreated for the 2021 film; the Suffolk shooting that audiences recognise is the surrounding coast and river, including Snape, Iken, Butley, Shingle Street and Thorpeness beach, which is why a festival in Bury can talk about The Dig without pretending the cameras stood on the real ship burial.

How Long Is Once Upon a Time in Suffolk, and What Is It Rated?

The feature is listed at 120 minutes and carries an 18 certificate, a hard rating for a fairytale anthology, which fits Mery’s note that some chapters run darker than family folklore even as others stay light.

When Did Abbeygate First Show Full-Length Films?

The Central opened in 1924 as a music hall with short films between acts; full-length pictures arrived in 1936 after a fire burned out the back of the building and a new projection room went up, which is the point the site stopped being a variety house with moving pictures and became a cinema.

Who Sponsored the Made in East Anglia Film Festival?

Butterworth & Son, coffee roasters and tea smiths based on Moreton Hall in Bury St Edmunds, was the main sponsor in 2025 and 2026; Rob Butterworth has said the festival chimed with his own family trade, which began when his father came home in 1976 and bought a long-running shop in the town.