Scarborough Film Society has been running continuously since its first season in 1959. The idea was born during conversations on the commuter train from Cloughton to Scarborough (yes, there were trains running until 1965).

In those days film societies worked independently, ordering 16 mm copies of films direct from the British Film Institute or from one of a host of independent distributors. The first few seasons featured exclusively foreign language films; in part because they were hard to get to see, but also because the sound equipment was so basic that the dialogue was impossible to decipher - subtitles were a godsend.

The society has used a number of venues including, in recent years, the art gallery and its present home in Scarborough Library. Like hundreds of other towns, Scarborough has a limited number of films on show in commercial cinemas. The film society makes up for this by showing films from around the world (including Britain and the US) that are not given wide distribution by the commercial operators. Given the paucity of films shown on mainstream television (there is now a firm policy not to show any non-English language films) the society is now the only chance to see many of the most acclaimed and interesting films released each year.

Classic foreign language films by directors like Pedro Almodovar (Talk to Her, and many more), Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros), together with British films such as My Summer of Love and Vera Drake, would have little or no exposure without the society. The current secretary, Tony Davison, was in at the beginning, just 46 years ago. The society, like Tony, is still going strong.