Classic Film Venues in London

[rohmerin]

A part of BFI under the Waterloo bridge, Where can I see classics films screened in London?
I'm moving next week and I've not got idea about cinemas in the UK capital.

Gracias.

[Sloper]

Others will no doubt give you better advice about this, but I used to love the Curzon Soho, which showed a lot of foreign/classic stuff, though nothing too obscure. There's also the Barbican, a slightly grotty place when I knew it, but they sometimes host revivals of classics - I saw Pather Panchali there.

Things have no doubt changed since I was last in London. I just used to trawl through the cinema listings in the Guardian 'Guide', or Time Out will probably tell you everything you need to know.

[rohmerin]

=D> =D> =D> Muchas gracias.
I did not know neither of you have told me. Both sound great. I've looked their web sites and there's a Bergman retrospective in the Barbican, and Fresa y chocolate y the Curzon.

By the way, my subject was edited, so , I've learnt the meaning of "Film venue", thank you for the correction and the lesson for improving my English.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Other good cinemas generally would include the Renoir (part of the Curzon chain) and the Rio, an independent cinema in East London. Screen on the Green in Islington is fine but I dislike the seating. Where else? The ICA often has some good seasons and the Barbican's been mentioned.

Film Nights are a growing phenomenon in London, according to this article, as I'm sure they are in numerous large cities.

I've been to a few of the Second Run screenings, where they rent the reception room of a pub (well, they did when they used the Flea Pit) to screen one of their latest releases.

As far as I gather, they work in one of two ways; there's a cover charge to watch the film or presumably there's an arrangement whereby the additional bar's takings compensate whoever's organising the screening.

Has anyone ever organised a screening, and if so, how did you find it and would you recommend it? Are there various pitfalls, things to watch out for? Who should I approach? Are pubs normally good locations to use, do they have the right equipment? Certainly, they're cheaper than indie cinemas where you'd need to completely sell out to break even.

Then, would there be issues about what films you show.....would you need to look into royalties as it's a public screening.

It's only the small seeds of an idea; there are plenty of these nights in London and obviously you have to ensure you're better than existing rivals. It'd just be a recreational thing but the power of film programming has such attraction to it.

[foggy eyes]

Soho and the other Curzons (Mayfair and Renoir) are pretty overpriced, and (in my experience) are plagued by overly bright digital projection - avoid if possible. Always keep an eye on the Tate Modern, Ciné lumière, Riverside Studios and one-offs like the Working Men's Club, Close-Up & Second Run @ wherever they book. Apart from the NFT, it's always worth checking the schedules for the ICA, Barbican and all sorts of galleries and installation spaces. (Caveat: I don't actually live in London, but travel over regularly - native residents will probably have a different perspective.)

[Awesome Welles]

No, you're on it Foggy. Riverside occassionally programmes great double and triple bills and is very reasonably priced at £7.50 or so. Curzon cinemas are nice but a little pricey. Only go to the Renoir if the film is only playing there and no where else, it's a bit of a dive with very uncomfortable seats but the surrounding Brunwick Centre is quite pleasant. Barbican have increasingly had a good programme of films and booking online is cheap at about £7.50 in comparison with £9.50 on the door (I think). Check out the London Picturehouse cinemas for their occasional showings of classics though these are few and far between. Screen on the Green shows decent films with something odd thrown in every now and again, though the seats are quite uncomfortable and unbearable if you are tall. Short Wave Cinema shows an odd variety of films but is reasonably priced, I haven't been there yet so can't vouch for quality. The Rich Mix looks to be an interesting place but haven't been there yet either (I tend to go where I can get in free so my experience of these newer, smaller venues is limited). Get Time Out when you arrive the listings are clearly displayed in the Other Cinema section where you can easily see what's on.

[foggy eyes]

I reckon that's all the major bases covered. Perhaps Gropius, otis or MichaelB have something to add?

rohmerin, it's well worth investing in a BFI membership. If you're lucky enough to be a student too, then an evening screening at the NFT is only just over £5...

[Awesome Welles]

It also may be of note that if there's anything in particular you want to see you can hire out a print from the BFI from the special collections unit in Stephen Street, apparently this isn't expensive...

[rohmerin]

The only cinema in London where I've been watching a film (Mio fratello è figlio unico) was in at Renoir, and for me, it was like being seated in an art-and eassay (that means no Spanish doubting) cinema in Madrid, where, Renoir are a chain too.

Thank you for the replies. I regret but I'm not a student, so bye-bye to discounts. #-o The hire of a BFI print sounds great but I'm afraid I can¡t afford that for the moment, or in a long future.

Another question, is there an original & beautiful Art Deco cinema in London from the 20's or 30's? I love the architecture and decoration when Cinemas were bourgeois film palaces, and I'd like to go to visit if they are still opened.

Londoners, don't miss Wajda's KATYN, I must confess I own a downloaded print, because it's a great WW2 film.

[Awesome Welles]

I think most of the old art deco building are now Bingo halls but the only thing that (vaguely) springs to mind for an art-deco cinema is the Electric on Portobello Road and I believe the Phoenix in East Finchley is an old art deco cinema. Being a South Londoner I haven't been to either and the Electric generally shows a load of old pap but if the experience is all you're after this should fit the (expensive) bill.

I believe hiring the BFI works out to about £5 a seat if you can fill the very small auditorium (this will need checking). If us Londoners can all agree on a film I'm in!

[Gropius]

Another question, is there an original & beautiful Art Deco cinema in London from the 20's or 30's? I love the architecture and decoration when Cinemas were bourgeois film palaces, and I'd like to go to visit if they are still opened.

The golden age of cinemas is long past, not that I was around to witness it. Although Foggy and 'Awesome' have picked out the relevant highlights, the state of film exhibition in London is, given the city's size, fairly underwhelming, with many former 'classic' venues shut down or cannibalised within the last couple of decades.

The NFT/BFI stands out as the remaining beacon of repertory values, as it ought to, although some traditionalists have complained that the programme is now spread too thinly with superficial 'special events' and not enough depth of focus, which is debatable. I don't envy the programmers, since they have to please the surly pensioners who want archival British comedy as well as we younger would-be avant-gardist types. Personally I think the BFI blew it somewhat with the recent redevelopment, apparently spending most of the money on a showy restaurant and a disappointing fourth screen (the 'Studio': digital-only, very few seats and no rake).

What the capital conspicuously lacks is a dedicated cinema for experimental or 'artists' film' (or even genuinely 'independent' narrative features), akin to the reputedly impressive Anthology Archives in New York; evidently it would be economically unsustainable. There used to be one in the shape of the Lux Cinema (the rump of the Filmmakers' Co-op), but this had closed down by the time I was aware of it. Lux still organise screenings (as do other organisations, as Foggy mentions), but in a somewhat cliquey, word-of-mouth way, usually in obscure parts of Hackney. The Tate Modern is the next best thing, and they do put on rare stuff, but their cinema is more of a lecture theatre ('auditorium') with a screen placed at the front as an afterthought, and could do with some expansion and more full-time programming (again - to use the NY comparison - as I've heard MoMA does). None of this is likely to happen, but I suppose we do have the consolation of living in the golden age of DVD/torrents.

[rohmerin]

So Paris still is the (last) paradise for film buffs.
-Well, we'll always have Paris.
London is huge but underrated. I suppose there's market for people like me if someone interested in culture opens a retro-cinema. So, I guess I've been lucky for enjoying lots of film venues at the Filmoteca Nacional in Madrid and in a cinema own by a Bank in my town. The screen on Madrid's filmoteca is huge, and to see there Murnau's Faust with live music was the biggest movie-orgasm in my life.

By the way, I've found an impressive list of Art Deco in London.

[Sloper]

rohmerin, if you like live performances of silent films, keep an eye on the schedule for Symphony Hall in Birmingham - once in a while Carl Davis accompanies silent comedy with a full orchestra and his own superb scores (I think he's doing Chaplin again sometime soon). I missed an organ-accompanied performance of Metropolis recently. It's a fantastic venue, and perhaps recreates some of that excitement 1920s audiences must have felt watching a great film accompanied by a professional orchestra. Seeing The General there, with a full house of extremely responsive fans (i.e. they laughed and applauded all the way through), counts as maybe the best time I've ever had in a cinema.

[Awesome Welles]

As far as live performances go Secret Cinema often do a few good events - they did a screening of If... in a private school, Jaws in a swimming pool that sort of thing.

[Cinetwist]

Unfortunately, I think everywhere has been mentioned. I would say that the Prince Charles is really good for the newer stuff, getting it late in the run, so it's really cheap.

And I've never been to either, but the Goethe-Institut and Institut Francais screen films regularly.

It's quite saddening how little there is actually. And the prices of places like the Barbican are extortionate. Paris shames London on prices and selection.

[MichaelB]

For family/geographical reasons I rarely go to the cinema in London any more, but my top five venues for comfort, technical polish and imaginative programming would probably still be (in alphabetical order) Barbican, BFI Southbank (NFT 1 & 3 significantly nicer than NFT2/Studio), Cine Lumiere, Curzon Soho and Riverside, with the last two vying for the top spot. If the Riverside was more convenient to get to I'd go much more often, as it's the best place in London for Academy ratio films - the screen is absolutely massive, thanks to the ultra-steep rake.

The golden age of repertory was probably the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the classic venues either closing their doors or retreating into much safer programming in the 1990s. I was the number two at the Everyman for half that decade so witnessed this at first hand. When I started in 1989, there was surprisingly little competition - most reps had their own niches, so there wasn't that much overlap, BBC2 and Channel 4 would show maybe one or two subtitled/culty films per week apiece, and just about the only subtitled films you could get on VHS were directed by Luc Besson or Jean-Jacques Beineix (I'm exaggerating slightly, but really not much).

But by the time I left in 1995 the situation had changed beyond recognition - cult/foreign language/OAR video made massive inroads into our market (when six early Almodóvars came out on VHS in the same week, one of our biggest cash cows was effectively slaughtered, as demonstrated by the box-office figures before and afterwards), and the number of local screens had effectively more than doubled thanks to the Odeon Swiss Cottage doubling in size and the Warner multiplex opening just up the road. Which meant that they could run films like Groundhog Day for months, which had a disproportionate effect on our income. We played recent high-profile titles on Saturday nights, usually just before their video debut, and used the profits to fund more obscure stuff, but extended local runs meant that we couldn't get the films until well after their video appearance, by which time everyone who wanted to had seen them.

And while satellite and cable weren't significant issues with our audience by 1995, there's no doubt they'd have caused even more problems - not to mention DVD. And a side-effect of the latter is that audiences are much fussier: we got away with some appallingly mangled 16mm prints because our audiences accepted that there was no alternative at the time, but this simply wouldn't work now.

Put it like this: in 1989 it was still possible to run an adventurously-programmed rep cinema with no subsidy other than the box office, and I loved the way my boss and I could just put things on purely because we felt like showing them (often because we wanted to see them ourselves). Now, this sort of thing is pretty much inconceivable.

[Sloper]

In my home town of Birmingham, there were only ever (to my knowledge) two places you could see anything remotely obscure: the Midlands Arts Centre and a little place called The Electric Cinema, which purports to be the oldest cinema in the UK (opened 1909 I think). It’s been through various incarnations over the years, but when I was a teenager it was a flea-pit with creaking, collapsing seats, run by stoners who hand-wrote your ticket for you – the perfect place to see Bergman’s Persona for the first time, a creepy and wonderful experience I treasure to this day. Of course it died in the early 2000s (impressive, perhaps, that it lasted so long), and has since been revamped as a sort of small-but-special cinema, showing largely mainstream fare but with unusual paraphernalia. They dressed the place up like a jungle for Jackson’s King Kong, which provided some welcome distraction from the godawful film.

You can catch a glimpse of the old Electric, dressed up as a porn palace, in Atom Egoyan’s superb Felicia’s Journey.

End of off-topic nostalgia trip.

[rohmerin]

I haven't gone to a cinema yet, but I saw today the filming of Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang about the WWII and the Blitz (that I'm here - among a lot of reasons- for studing the Blitz for my next novel project) with Emma Thopson on Regent Crescent.

What a city London is ! I've been biking here, my first time in 9 years, and what experience going on LEFT and feeling the rain, the buses, everything !

Another question, please, how can I discover wich Stars are going to be in London for the premieres at the Odeon in Leicester Sq ??? I saw a Bollywood premiere last year and it was a great fun for me although I didn't know anybody.

Muchas gracias.

[domino harvey]

New site aggregating screen times for sixty art house cinemas in London

[Altair]

I have to say, re-reading this thread, that almost nothing has changed in London in well over a decade - the BFi is still the best for rep screenings, the Prince Charles Cinema programmes all the 'cult' films you'd want (imagine if Arrow ran its own cinema), and then there are various smaller, ad hoc revivals by Curzon, Picturehouse etc. Compared to New York, LA, San Francisco etc cinema is much less central to the cultural life of London.

[JamesF]

There’s a few other decent independent cinemas scattered throughout the city with rep programming, ranging from the Castle Cinema in Hackney, the Garden Cinema in Holborn, and even the recently opened Nickel in Elephant & Castle (edit: nearly forgot The Cinema Museum in Kennington! Edit again: and the Regent Steet Cinema!), but otherwise the BFI is basically it. You won’t get much from the chains (including Picturehouse and Everyman, both quite conservative these days) except for established audience favourites and the odd one-off.

[MichaelB]

Just imagine a combo of an Everyman venue now (i.e. ultra-luxurious) with Everyman programming from the 1980s and 90s, when we’d show a different double or triple bill every day (two on Sundays) and would range as widely as what was in commercial distribution would let us, but things like physical comfort were perhaps lesser priorities.

Sadly, even after adjusting for inflation (i.e. from £2.50 in 1990), I don’t think this would be feasible for £6.25 a ticket. In truth, it wasn’t really feasible back then without any subsidy, and the “wing and a prayer” method only goes so far.

[thirtyframesasecond]

About twenty years ago the Curzons Soho and Mayfair used to show cheap double bills of old films on Sunday lunchtimes. I certainly remember seeing Kurosawa's Stray Dog and Drunken Angel. It's a pretty bland chain now.

[Balthazar]

A word for the ICA, whose film programme has come on leaps and bounds in the years since this thread was last active. In the past 18 months alone they've had full retros of Rivette, Duras and Angelopoulos, among others. Other highlights last year included Doomed Love, La Region Centrale, and City of Pirates, none of which had played anywhere in London (to my knowledge) for a long, long time prior.

In keeping with the 'contemporary' name, their remit feels like it's roughly 1970s onwards, but a growing number of programmes seem to be interspersing the odd classic, too. Griffith, Ford, Lang and Bresson have all popped up lately. Plus audiences are almost unfailingly respectful - far from a given nowadays, as per recent chat elsewhere on the forum.

[MichaelB]

Although the ICA played host to the biggest walkout that I’ve ever personally witnessed—I’d say at least three-quarters of the audience in the initially packed Cinematheque screen didn’t make it to the end.

Although, in fairness, the film in question was Stan Brakhage’s autopsy reverie The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, and when I chatted to the programmer not long afterwards he told me that he fully expected that reaction, which is why it was deliberately scheduled right at the end.