In the 1930s, Blackpool’s numerous theatres and picture houses could seat more than 60,000 people
Look up. That’s the thing that most Blackpool locals intuitively do. Not just because of the 518 feet of steel that towers above us, but because it is above street level and behind modern facades that much of what remains of the town’s former position as a world entertainment capital remains.
Sign up to The Blackpool Lead for free for more of our news, features, recommendations and investigations Locals have raised concerns about parking – a perennial problem in Blackpool – in the already busy Houndshill car park, and pricing. An adult IMAX ticket to see Dune: Part Two is £16 and a child’s, £12. A normal cinema ticket at Backlot is £11, and £7 for a child.
“It was affordable glamour,” says Catherine Mugonyi, founding director and programmer of Blackpool Film Festival – formerly the Winter Gardens Film Festival. “It was a way that people could afford to live it up for a couple of hours – escape, and be a part of Hollywood or something completely different.
Her next cinema date was more successful. She had met Philip two days earlier, on the 27th February 1976 in the 007 nightclub on Water Street. They’d already had a first proper date a day later, at the newly opened Number 3 wine bar. On the third day he took her to The Palladium cinema on Waterloo Road to see the epic drama Papillon.
The Regent Cinema on Church Street is the only heritage cinema still in use, after local businessman Rick Taylor restored it in 2016. “I love showing the ‘80s films because I was a kid then so you want to bring your kids to see it on the big screen. They come along and go, ‘yeah dad, alright’,” laughs Taylor. “Compared to a new release they’re so rubbish but it’s in your heart and you remember good times in that era so that’s what we try to recreate.”
Taylor’s nervousness is no doubt in part, too, due to the general decline of cinema. As far back as 1996 American critic Susan Sontag described cinema’s 100 years in the shape of a life cycle – “an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of glories and the onset in the last decade of an ignominious, irreversible decline”. Back then Blackpool still had two town centre cinemas – the ABC and the Odeon. The new one on Rigby Road would open two years later.
“Cinemas generally are not in their heyday because of the choice we have at home,” says Mugonyi. “There’s a multi-billion dollar industry designed to keep you consuming video on demand. A lot of research and a lot of money has gone into keeping people in their houses and not coming out to cinemas.”“Financial offers and incentives are, of course, the easy one, but they also need to offer something you wouldn’t always expect in terms of the programme.
“One of the big reasons for moving from Winter Gardens Film Festival to Blackpool Film Festival is that we want to involve more fringe venues and get more people showing film in their spaces as part of the wider programme throughout the year,” says Mugonyi. Since 2021, Mugonyi has also brought the BFI Film Club to Blackpool. Young people aged 12-15 learn how to make films with help from industry professionals, trying their hand at things like scriptwriting, filming on location, cinematography and video editing before screening their creations to friends and family.
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