Power to the People's Cinema

The Cambridge Film Trust are turning a former Habitat building into the venue for the first People’s Cinema Shopfront Screening. Check out the full story here. I like this idea of cinema heading out into empty buildings and have been thinking about all the old closed up cinemas and wondering if this type of project could breath new, if brief, life into them.

While attending the recent Clicks or Mortar? symposium at Newcastle’s Tyneside I watched filmmaker Paul Emery’s outdoor projection onto Pilgrim Street’s old Odeon cinema. This nostalgic piece projected heritage film footage from the Tyneside film society onto the façade of this decaying old beauty of a cinema.

The mix of old and new worked – or maybe old and old done in a new way. The cinema looked beautiful again for one night only, reminiscent of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. It, like so many boarded up old cinemas, have been ready for their close ups for a long time. But the truth is that if new ways of thinking about cinema, film and all the possibilities of digital culture enabled through a digital projector don’t rescue these crumbing recluses, they will either be demolished, burn down or turned into boutique hotels.

On which note we eagerly await the fate of Edinburgh’s old Odeon, currently being decided upon by Scottish ministers.