norfolk at the Pictures

Did you know that there used to be more than one cinema in the Norwich Lanes area?

In fact in Norwich alone, there have been over a dozen cinema venues since the invention of Moving Pictures in the 1890s.

Cinema City’s education charity Cinema Plus are busy researching the history of these buildings and the Norfolk people who worked in and visited them for a Heritage Lottery Funded project called Norfolk at the Pictures.

The project is part of a new development at Cinema City to create an education space and exhibition area (The Screen Heritage Centre), where visitors will be able to learn about and enjoy their local cinema history and heritage. The Centre will display some of the best photographs and stories from those that are currently being collected. The project will also be creating a map of cinema sites in Great Yarmouth and Norwich so you can visit some of the sites of these buildings yourself.

Anyone can get involved in the project by submitting their own memories of the buildings or the films they watched in them or by donating programmes, posters and photographs. The best pictures and stories will be featured in a magazine, documentary film and the Screen Heritage Centre at the end of the project. There are also a series of special screening events at Cinema City celebrating innovative and memorable films from the last century of cinema-going. Look out for these in the Cinema City brochure.

Cinema City

St Andrews Street, 1978

Cinema City is a thriving cultural cinema venue within a beautiful and historic medieval hall. Alongside showing films the cinema also runs education projects, school events and has a successful restaurant/bar attached. Films have been shown here since its restoration aided by the Colman Family in the late 1920s. Cinema City was established in 1978 as a Regional Film Theatre, part of a government initiative to expand the work of the National Film Theatre in London (originally the B.F.I. Southbank)

Theatre De Luxe

St Andrew’s Broad Street, circa 1910

1910 saw the arrival of the Theatre De Luxe (Pronounced locally as the Theatre-de-loo!) to St. Andrews Street, established by Electric Theatres, this was the first purpose-built cinema building, and it also brought with it the practice of saying “cinema”, rather than “cinematograph”. After its initial success, it was expanded in 1920 to accommodate the growing cinema audiences in the city. The last to convert to talking films in 1931, it was however the first to screen 3 dimensional films. Cinema screenings stopped around 1957, and the building was demolished in 1970.

The Hippodrome

St Giles, 1903-1960

This cinema and theatre was officially opened in 1903 as the Grand Opera House before changing its name to ‘The Hippodrome’ several years later. Located in St Giles, it initially showed live performances. The Hippodrome officially opened as a picture-house in 1930 and functioned as a cinema for the next seven years until it stopped screening films and reverted to putting on stage shows. It became a cinema once again in the late 1950s but this was short-lived, and it closed in 1960 and was demolished.

www.norfolkatthepictures.org.uk

There’s been an abundance of activity bubbling behind the scenes at SHhhh. With moving into a new studio space, a new collection due to launch and exciting collaborations in the works we are set to surf into 2015 on a positive vibe!

Unit 15 / SHhhh x Kinsu Bags

We recently moved into a new shared studio space ’Unit 15’ where we now work alongside a stimulating cluster of creative talent. Moving here has been a real game changer for us and has presented a new perspective and a more productive workflow. Although our practises and products are contrasting, that simple itch to create and progress bonds us together. Unit 15 houses ourselves, artist Harry Newman (@Nukof), artist Anmar Mirza, photographer Emily Jane Morgan and Kiran Harper founder / designer at Kinsu. Over the past few weeks we have been working on a collaborative duffle bag with Kinsu. After undergoing vast fabric research and testing we decided to make the bags from a high performance waxed British cotton. Each bag will be hand made right here in Norwich and these will be available to buy early next year via both www.shhhh.co.uk and www.kinsu.co.uk