Given Soho’s famous Prince Charles cinema is under threat of closure, there’s never been a better time to support independent operations in London, where movies have for so long been a vital and enchanting part of our culture.
Our city’s cinema history isn’t quite the stuff of vaulting legend. It’s more discreet than that. The Regent Street Cinema is chronologically where things began, in the 1840s, with so-called magic lantern shows (which would probably fall under the “variety” umbrella today, as they featured comedy, live music and projections of hand-drawn images) and “Our Army and Our Navy” films, which brought a certain Imperial propaganda from the music hall to the silver screen.
