A former petrol station on Clerkenwell Road is being imaginatively re-developed into a pop-up cinema.
The empty forecourt, which recently held the closing party for the London Festival of Architecture, will be converted into The Cineroleum. It opens on Friday, August 20th, and is, in the words of the people behind it, designed to "[celebrate] the extravagance and ceremony of the picture palace". It's being hand-built mostly from found and donated materials; they're even building the flip-down seats, which don't really look comfortable enough to, say, sit through the entirety of Heimat on.
Luckily, none of the films are likely to trouble your glutes too badly. The line-up is mostly mid- to late 20th century American classics with a few early European films thrown in too. Highlights include: Rebel Without A Cause on the opening night; a pair of Fritz Lang classics, M on September 5th and the restored version of Metropolis (which is getting a major re-release this year) on September 11th; Night of the Living Dead on September 3rd; and Alphaville on August 28th — an apt choice, as the film used Paris' urban desolation of the 1960s as the setting for a dystopian detective story. For more details see the full list of films. Tickets cost £5, and go on sale from today, Monday, August 9th.
The Cineroleum is part of a growing trend of films being shown in unlikely locations. Secret Cinema has proved very successful, while last year a Werner Herzog season concluded with a screening in an old biscuit factory. Earlier this year the Aubin opened in Shoreditch and we had a pop-up cinema in Portobello Road. A reaction, perhaps, to the stagnant atmosphere found in the Vues and Odeons of this world?
