Turn of the Century

Ster Century, Ireland's largest cinema complex to date, will open its doors next Thursday night for midnight screenings of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. These will be the first public shows of the much-anticipated prequel, which will have its Irish premiere at the Savoy in Dublin a few hours earlier that night.

Located in the new Liffey Valley complex - "where the M50 meets the N4" - the Ster Century complex will house 14 screens, four of them bigger than any other screen in Ireland. Screen One, which has an area of 195 square meters, is the largest multiplex screen in Ireland or Britain, and it will be christened The Big Fella by Michael Collins and Phantom Menace star Liam Neeson next Friday.

The complex is the first venture into the Irish market by the South African exhibition chain, Ster Kinekor, which has 75 per cent of the South African market. "We hope to grow the Irish market with the Liffey Valley cinemas, and we expect to draw from the complexes in Tallaght and Blanchardstown," Mike Ross, the managing director of Ster Century, said when I visited the site of the new complex. "The Dublin market is very sophisticated."

The Liffey Valley multiplex is the first of three complexes which Ster Century plans to open in Ireland, representing an investment of £22 million. Next on their agenda is a site in Santry, just a kilometre or two from the Omniplex nine-screen complex and near the UCI in Coolock. That proximity "does concern me", Ross says, "but that site is going ahead and we are planning for 16 screens".

The company's third Irish complex will be in Cork, where they are at present in negotiation on a site. Clearly the company has no reservations about the future of cinema. "In the UK, where we have signed five deals for sites so far, you sign a 25-year lease, which certainly focuses the mind," Ross says. "But as people get more self-sufficient at home, the environment of the cinema as a place to mix or just to be entertained gets more and more attractive. The cinema industry has faced a number of doomsday predictions down the years - and has survived."

Construction at the Liffey Valley site was delayed by seven weeks during the scaffolders' strike and it was far from being completed when I visited last week, although Mike Ross remains firmly confident that everything will be place for next Thursday night's opening. Consequently, it wasn't possible to get a demonstration of the cinema at work.

However, the huge screens look very impressive and there is a commendably wide space between each screen and the front row of seats, and the seating itself, which is stadium-style, is very comfortable and spacious. The projection equipment and sound technology will be state-of-the-art, Mike Ross promises, and will feature the new digital sound, Surround EX, which has the ideal demonstration model in The Phantom Menace.

That Star Wars prequel will be playing on three screens when Ster Century opens on Thursday night. The opening attractions also will include current releases such as The Matrix, Notting Hill, The Mummy and Entrapment, along with two Irish productions, A Love Divided and Crush Proof.