A mid-Somerset cinema has had to turn away bookings after a distributor delayed its screenings of one of the year's must-see films.

The Wells Film Centre had received a provisional booking to show the black-and-white silent film The Artist from this week.

The film, based on the transition period between silent movies and talkies, has received 10 nominations for the Oscars and 12 for the Baftas.

Film centre owner Derek Cooper had already received many requests from customers wanting to see the movie, but now the distributors have told him he cannot show it for weeks.

He said: "In 37 years of booking films for my own cinemas I've never experienced anything like it.

"Entertainment film distributors had secured the rights for the UK distribution of The Artist at last year's Cannes Film Festival but since the critics have seen it the hype around the film has gathered in momentum, boosted by the award nominations.

"It was actually first released at the end of last year and is meant to have saturation coverage but instead of the distributors allowing it to be shown in as many cinemas as they can, they are only allowing a relatively small number of new cinemas to show it each week.

"Even the Odeon film chain are only able to show it in a dozen or so sites across the country.

"In fact, it is now week five of the film being on release in the UK and of the 1,700 cinema sites in the UK only 141 are showing the film.

"We are very lucky here, we have a good relationship with the distributors and consequently often show films, such as War Horse, on the day they are released, which means no one in the UK gets to see the film before our customers.

"Originally we had a provisional booking of last week, which wasn't great but we accepted it.

"We've had lots of our customers – our loyal base who come in week after week – asking when are they going to see it and I was sending emails to the distributors, and the only response was that they were monitoring the situation regarding the demand from the public.

"Three weeks later, we know the public want to see it but we were then told our provisional booking no longer stood and we will have to wait until perhaps the middle of February.

"The fact is that by the middle of February many of the public will have moved on to other films or will decide to wait until the film comes out on DVD. What will be the point of showing it then, with the school holidays upon us?

"It is very frustrating, our customers are very frustrated. It won't affect our box office: luckily we have eight other pictures that are very popular. But it affects our loyal customers.

"On one afternoon alone I turned down about 100 requests for bookings to see The Artist.

"And it is a double-edged sword. Strode Theatre has known since the end of the autumn that they would be able to show The Artist in March. They've been able to publicise that and take bookings.

"We are an independent cinema, offering the best in box office blockbusters and independent, quality historic or art house films. We do exactly what the Prime Minister was talking backing hit films. And yet we can't."

At the time of going to press no reply was received from Entertainment.