This post is a plea to you, the cinema going public.
Please visit your local cinema. Ignore the large chains. Hit your local, independent, cinema. You will have an experience similar to that you remembered as a child! I’m sure that some still have an intermission with the girl selling small tubs of ice cream. Also, buy the popcorn, soft drinks, sweets or whatever they sell as this helps keeping the cinema running than purchasing a ticket.
This may sound odd. It does make sense. When a film is shown at the cinema the distributor – the people who paid for the film to be made – take a cut from your ticket price. This has been as high as 95%. In other words, for that film, the cinema will only get five pence in the pound for showing that film!
Normally, for the first week, this figure is around 80% dropping down to, around, 40% after a couple of weeks.
If you don’t buy your popcorn, drinks and other snacks at your cinema we are all have the chance of losing historic cinemas to be converted into another chain pub, demolished and converted into flats as, at least, one classic cinema has become.
Without your support cinemas such as the Kinema in the Woods at Woodhall Spa. One of the strangest, and possibly greatest, cinemas in the world. Originally converted from a sports pavilion just over 90 years ago. Now still going strong with only it’s second owner. This may also be a record. It also, due to being a converted pavilion, uses “rear projection” due to the lack of height of the building. In other words, the projector is situated behind the screen. This means that the film has to be bounced off a mirror before it hits the screen. This is needed so the image is projected correctly for the audience. I could go on and on about thid site but head over to the official website and read about its history.
The cinema that I hinted at earlier was the Cine City in Withington, Manchester UK. It was opened in 1912 as the third cinema to open in the country.
I used to work on the cinemas website and fell in love with the place. It was a bit of a “flea pit”. With strange staircases, the Gents toilets hidden underneath the stairs that led up to the main screen, Screen 1. This meant that the ceiling of the toilets got lower the further into the room you got. It had all the charm that the large multiplexes don’t.
It closed in June 2001 and it was sad to see such an old cinema with so much more life in her closing. It had survived two world wars [including bomb damage during the Manchester blitz], the rise of television and video but what finally killed it was a faceless multiplex built just down the road.
Then, finally, after many years of falling into decay, it was finally demolished in 2008. A sad end for such an historic cinema.
So to finish off, all I can say is:
Go to your local cinema, enjoy the film is possibly not the latest technology but you will probably have a lot better time than going out of town to a faceless multiplex! And don’t forget to buy some popcorn!
