ELEVEN thousand people won’t be visiting the National Media Museum next year. The Bradford International Film Festival (BIFF), which last year attracted that number over 11 days, has been scrapped for 2015.

While that’s hardly hot news – the announcement was made, quietly, in late July – pulling out such a prestigious annual event as though it was a rotten tooth seemed to vindicate the pessimism of Jeremiahs about the museum’s future.

Was UNESCO’s first World City of Film about to implode, losing the Pictureville, Cubby Broccoli and IMAX cinemas?

Then came the news of £2m of public investment over the next three years promised by Bradford Council and the Science Museum Group, followed by the announcement of a partnership with Picturehouse Cinemas and public assurances about the future of film at the museum.

Lyn Goleby, managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas said: “We will work very hard to ensure that the cinema is successful and contributes to Bradford’s status as a UNESCO City of Film.”

Jo Quinton-Tulloch said: “Our partnership with Picturehouse Cinemas will ensure the long-term sustainability of cinema on this site.”

A review of the museum’s various cinema festivals being carried out by her management team is expected to report, hopefully by the end of this year. The Bradford International Film Festival, then, is merely having a year off and will be back in 2016.

As though in affirmation of the statements by Lyn Goleby and Jo Quinton-Tulloch, the northern premiere of Randall Wright’s biopic Hockney took place at the NMM last week.

The red carpet event – there was an actual red carpet, invited guests, champagne and men in bow ties – heralded the start of the partnership between the NMM and Picturehouse.

The organisation was founded in 1989 to challenge the multiplex cinema chain idea. But in 2012, the company was sold to conglomerate Cineworld for £47.3m. Cineworld later acquired Cinema City as well. Picturehouse Cinemas and Cineworld retain their own independent management structures, however.

Cineworld, Odeon UCI and Vue operate nearly 6,000 cinema screens in the UK. Cineworld has1,858 digital screens in 202 cinemas; Odeon and UCI 2,194 screens in 240 cinemas and Vue 1,727 screens in 187 multiplexes.

The Hockney documentary – in which shots of 1960s Bradford, Hockney’s mother and father, and the Royal College of Art, are its most poignant and amusing aspects – was distributed by Picturehouse Entertainment, which also arranged the live Q&A session with the 77-year-old Bradford-born artist in his Los Angeles studio next Tuesday.

David Jane, Picturehouse general manager at the NMM, said the partnership was not a sticking plaster for a seriously wounded organisation. He said: “It’s absolutely a sign of confidence in the future. We are here to grow the audience for cinema. We are here for the long-term.”

Well, at least for the next five years – the contracted period of the partnership for which Picturehouse will be paid a management fee.

“Any extra revenue generated will go back to the museum,” said Mr Jane, who was asked by the London-based company if he would like to come down from Aberdeen, where he has been living with his wife and two children, to run the Bradford operation..

His responsibilities include the museum’s three screens, projection room, box office, cinema staff, the bar adjacent to Pictureville, which will be open seven days a week from midday from December. Films will be chosen in London, but there will be input from Bradford. His remit does not extend to the restaurant.

Similarly, Mr Jane said Picturehouse, which runs the Cambridge Film Festival and contributes to the Edinburgh Film Festival, would be happy to co-operate with the museum in shaping the Bradford International Film Festival.

He said: “We will be opening all three of our screens seven days a week from 10.30am. Monthly Cinerama screenings will be returning. There will be more 70mm screenings – Vertigo, The Thing. Vintage Sunday will focus on screening classics such as The French Connection and M.

“We are extending screenings for seniors to Tuesday and Thursday. We are extending live screenings to include the Bolshoi Ballet, the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne. There will be more live Q &A’s. We want to show the best in independent documentary film-making.

“Picturehouse does film-programming for 65 cinemas in the UK, which gives us greater opportunities of getting in new films instead of waiting two or three weeks down the line.

“Picturehouse wants to encourage people to ‘come and see films they don’t know they love yet’, from the moment they walk through the door to the moment they leave.”

In short, significant change is on the way, aimed at attracting more people to enjoy a day or an evening out at the pictures.