Over the last few years, local independent cinemas have started screening “Then And Now” archive films, showing local people and places from bygone years. Outside of London, these screenings are becoming wildly popular, and it’s not your usual Art-House crowd, but families, grandparents with their grandkids, and people that would normally steer clear of all that pretentious foreign muck. Local cinemas are using these screenings to engage their local communities, forming profitable creative partnerships with local government, schools, youth clubs, libraries, and museums. It’s a lovely way of bringing together local neighbourhoods and connecting people through a sense of shared history. And yet, amidst the blizzard of transience that often passes for community in London, this trend has largely passed us by. Last year the Independent Cinema Office pulled together The Big Smoke, a peripatetic programme of archive material showing London between 1896 and 1945. These films are currently doing the rounds of London’s boroughs, although the audience seems to be the rather closeted and self-regarding Art-House crowd. The screenings don’t seem to have attracted the same diversity or engagement of audience that has been seen in the regions. New strategies will need to be developed to engage with these new audiences in an urban context. A festival of Edwardian Shoreditch anyone? Well, until then, enjoy these films from a lost London.

Thanks to Rob Hughes for this story. Rob is our resident moving image expert, academic, feminist-pusher, and lovable miserabilist. His favourite film is Firehouse Dog.

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