Take your seats for a double bill featuring the missing movie houses of the metropolis
Doors: 7pm.
Oral historian and broadcaster ALAN DEIN delves into the topsy turvy history of cinema going in East London. From the early years of cheap and cheerful picture houses to the dream palaces of the 1930s like 'The Troxy',a magnificent 3000-plus seater, the locality once boasted a remarkable variety of buildings devoted to the world of film. By the end of the 1980's, every single one had shut down or had completely disappeared from the landscape.
From his early childhood, Alan was told rather bonkers stories about his own family's adventure in film. During the interwar years, his maternal great grandparents were the proprietors of 'The Cable Picture Palace', a notorious 'fleapit' in Cable Street that was hugely popular with the locals until it was blitzed from the earth one day in 1941. Drawing on family photographs and reminiscences, he has pieced together the life and times of a lost world, and how it was connected to a wider history of filmgoing in London's East End.
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Meanwhile across town, cinema historian NIGEL SMTH goes in search of the lost cinemas of West London - and Acton in particular. Until recently, the West London neighbourhood hadn't had its own cinema since the early 1990s. But back in the 1940s, when cinemagoing in Britain was at its peak, the area boasted five local cinemas all within walking distance of each other.
This situation was replicated all over the capital. Some of Acton’s lost cinemas were grand picture palaces built in the 1920s, other smaller ones that opened in the silent era became ‘flea-pits’ as World War II approached. Acton High Street also boasted two 1930s 'super-cinemas’ - one of which still survives in a surprising new guise.
The stories of these cinemas take in ground-breaking architecture, hilarious promotional efforts and even a couple of Hollywood stars. They also tell us about the wider history of cinemagoing in London through the decades
ALAN DEIN is a freelance oral historian and radio broadcaster for, among others, the BBC, the British Library, the Museum of London, English Heritage, the Jewish Museum, the Royal Parks, the Guardian, and numerous community-based groups.
He has been presenting documentary features for BBC Radio 4 since the mid-1990s, and has received several major radio awards including the Prix Italia, the Prix Europa, and the Sony Radio Academy. He is currently the presenter of the BBC R4 series ‘Don’t Log Off’, and is a Committee Member of the Oral History Society.
NIGEL SMITH has been a self-confessed film nerd since his first trip to cinema, age 4, to see Superman II. He’s a qualified tour guide who specialises in walking tours about the history of cinemas and cinemagoing in London and co-runs Tufnell Park Film Club.
Follow him on Twitter @nigelcsmith and find out more about his tours at nigelsmithwalks.com
