CUMBRIA’S smallest cinema has upgraded to the latest digital screening technology thanks to a National Lottery grant of almost £8,000.

The Carthouse Community Cinema in Oxen Park village has installed new surround sound, a digital switching cabinet and improved editing tools to support its community film-making work.

As well as giving the cinema room for more people to attend each screening, it also means that the existing mobile equipment can be used by its volunteers for screenings in communities and village halls throughout South Lakeland.

Carol McNeill, secretary and founder member of the cinema, said: “The set-up we have now is awesome.

“It’s improved the sound and picture quality and helped us create a much more professional presentation.

“Our first screening with the new equipment will be ‘Pride’, a really heart-warming and cheerful story of how a Welsh mining community was helped through the miner’s strike by some fairly unusual visitors to the valleys.”

The Oxen Park Cinema Club has been showing films in communities since 2002.

In November 2013, it opened its own purpose-built 40-seat cinema in the village of Oxen Park, in the Rusland Valley.