Old films, new fans: inside the repertory cinema boom
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It’s a bitter Tuesday night in November in central London, and a small crowd has gathered just off Leicester Square. The Prince Charles Cinema – formerly a theatre, then an adult film house – is holding a screening of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s drawn a diverse audience: only around a quarter of the attendees look like wizards.
They aren’t here to see the acclaimed Peter Jackson trilogy, though. Rather it’s Ralph Bakshi’s cobbled-together 1978 animated version, which screeches to a halt around the end of The Two Towers, and whose often nightmarishly drawn characters include a Gandalf who resembles a melted candle. It is, fairly famously, not a very good film, and has also been freely available to watch at home since 1980. Yet 134 tickets have been sold: more than were bought all day, on average, for the brand new Hunger Games film at every cinema playing it.
This is repertory cinema in action – and in the UK, or at least some lucky pockets of it, the form feels as if it is on the edge of a rebirth. Rep cinemas, as they’re more commonly known, specialise in screening classic films rather than the weekly churn of new releases. Until the 1960s, they were commonly seen around Britain, but the toll of television, physical media and the rise of the multiplex had, by the noughties, driven most to extinction.
Since the pandemic, though, there have been flickerings of life. In the capital alone, 98 sites now put on regular rep screenings, from boutique and arthouse chains like Picturehouses, Curzon and Everyman to volunteer-run ‘community cinemas’ at pubs, museums and schools, to a handful of dedicated rep houses, many of which opened in the last few years. And around the country, over 1,500 community cinemas are currently in operation – a 50 per cent increase since Covid.
Ticket sales for rep screenings aren’t formally collated, and the very nature of the practice (one-off showings of, well, pretty much anything) means a single title is unlikely to dent the box-office chart. But anecdotally, we seem to be showing up in ever greater numbers. On a drizzly afternoon at the Garden Cinema in London’s Holborn, the larger of its two screens is at 90 per cent capacity for a screening of the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. The clientele is largely a mixture of retirees and students, and afterwards many stick around for an informal discussion – not unlike a book group – led by one of the venue’s knowledgeable programmers.
The Garden Cinema opened in March last year and is the passion project of Michael Chambers, a lawyer and publisher who built it in the cellar of his firm’s former offices. The conversion, which was overseen by Chambers himself rather than a building contractor, cost £1.5 million, and resulted in the sort of place you’d visit regardless of what was playing: rich colours, snug booths, objets and artefacts here and there, and the aroma of coffee, rather than popcorn, drifting from the concessions stand.
Eclectic is the word for the programming, which ranges from a season on new Taiwanese masters like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien to family favourites on weekend mornings, run on a pay-what-you-can basis. The job of assembling the schedule falls to a small team of programmers – though the cinema’s 10,000-strong membership, built in just 18 months, can also submit requests via the website. Across town at the Prince Charles, meanwhile, attendees scratch their demands on a blackboard downstairs, which currently range from Shogun Assassin to Captain Underpants.
Perhaps that sense of community helps explain rep’s renewed appeal: a cinema can and should be more than the sum of its films. The forthcoming documentary Scala!!!, released in January, paints a picture of Britain’s most notorious rep house as a nexus of alternative culture, where artists, writers and musicians of the 1980s had their pioneering tastes shaped in turn by its, ahem, varied programme.
The Scala in London’s Kings Cross (which closed as a cinema in 1993; it has since reopened as a nightclub) played host to everything from vintage Laurel and Hardy two-reelers to the severest art cinema Europe had to offer. But one stalwart was a particularly tasteless pornographic horror film called Thundercrack!, which was screened so often the print eventually fell apart.
Needless to say, almost none of the Scala’s audience would have even heard of Thundercrack! had its staff not been such enthusiasts. But part of the beauty of rep cinema is that taste can get into the bricks of a place.
Not that a specific building is required. Steven Hanley is the founder and lead curator of Deeper Into Movies, an organisation that puts on rep screenings at a number of venues around London and the South East. What began in 2015 as a weekly event at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club has since evolved into a mini-empire of talks, events, podcasts, records and a vintage poster shop.
Their unlikely breakthrough came in 2019 with a little-seen documentary on the photographer Nan Goldin, a VHS copy of which Hanley had bought on eBay for £30 and had shipped over from the United States. The film’s galvanising message about the value of art struck a chord with East London’s young creatives, and Hanley sold out 15 screenings at a bar in Hackney, to an audience of 120 a time.
The curation process, Hanley says, is “professional gambling: something like that can be a hit against all odds, then the next week you’ll struggle to sell 50 tickets to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.”
Other improbable box-office hits have included a screening of the Mexican surrealist epic The Holy Mountain with a live score by a Japanese rock group. “We did two sold-out screenings,” Hanley says. “People still talk to me about it.”
That, too, may be intrinsic to rep’s fresh appeal. In an algorithmic world, here are ways to spend your time that a computer could never come up with, all of which bear the warmth of a human curatorial touch. Scrolling through a streaming platform’s list of films and shows can induce what psychologists call choice paralysis: we want to pick the best option (because we value our spare time) but there are so many of roughly equal interest that our brains become incapable of alighting on one in particular. Rep cinema, on the other hand, says oi you – we’re showing (say) Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings on Tuesday night, are you up for it or not?
Outside the Prince Charles afterwards, small groups of attendees huddle together and excitedly discuss what they’d just seen with misty breath. All are alive to the film’s many flaws, but none regret having seen it. The consensus seems to be it was a memorable night, melty Gandalf and all.
But why travel into the city centre to watch a film that’s available to stream at home for £3.99? And why this particular film “I don’t know, really,” someone laughs. “Because it was on.”
Others are more romantic. “It wouldn’t have been the same, would it?” says one. “That energy you get in the room when everyone watches it together is the film, in a way.”
Five more great repertory cinemas
The Phoenix, East Finchley
When it opened in 1912, the Phoenix’s first screening was a short film about the Titanic, which had sunk the previous month. These days, themed seasons of Phoenix Classics are interspersed with courses in film-making and animation and guest Q&As. phoenixcinema.co.uk
The Electric, Birmingham
The oldest working cinema in the UK (it started trading in 1909) relaunched last year under new ownership following a glitzy refurb. The newly installed 35mm projector is regularly put to good use, with a Christopher Nolan mini-season currently occupying its sprockets. electricbirmingham.com
Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds
Initially built as a hotel but converted in 1914, this local Edwardian landmark has just been restored to the tune of £4.8m. Its original gas lighting – thought to be the last in any cinema in the world – is still in situ. hpph.co.uk
Watershed, Bristol
Formerly a clump of derelict 19th-century harbour warehouses, this three-screen complex opened in 1982, and runs a busy programme of talks and events. Its annual Cinema Rediscovered festival is a jewel of the UK rep scene, screening new restorations of beloved and forgotten classics. watershed.co.uk
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow
This wood-panelled Art Deco palace, huddled on the blustery corner of Renfrew and Rose streets, was Britain’s first art-house cinema outside London when it began business in 1939. It’s the site of the thriving Glasgow Film Festival, and its balcony bar serves a mean espresso. glasgowfilm.org
