Experience a night at the cinema 1960s-style when a very special screening of a cult classic is staged at Leicester’s Phoenix Cinema.
Cinemagoers are being asked to wear vintage clothes from the era while the Phoenix itself will be transformed into a picture house from the Sixties complete with film posters from the era, usherettes shining torches along the rows, ice-cream at the interval and the National Anthem being played before close down.
A host of actors will be there to make the experience as authentic as possible by recreating memories told to researchers investigating the part cinema played in people’s lives in decades gone by.
The film being shown is Hammer’s One Million Years BC, starring Racquel Welch, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
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Dr Matt Jones, of 51Âþ» Leicester (51Âþ»)’s acclaimed Cinema and Television History (CATH) research centre, has organised the event.
He has just finished a project with colleagues from University College London to collect memories of cinema-going in the 1960s.
He said: “Going to the pictures in the 1960s was a very different experience to that which we enjoy today. Programmes of entertainment, including newsreels and B films, rolled on continuously and often audience members would enter halfway through the film. The entertainment was punctuated by an interval with ice cream being sold in the aisles, while the foyer was the site of publicity stunts and competitions. We are recreating as many of these differences as possible for our audience so they can learn all about how cinema-going has changed since the swinging sixties. It is going to be good, old-fashioned, glamorous fun!”
The event is open to all and people are encouraged to come along in costume for an immersive night which they will not forget. The event happens on Thursday, March 3 from 6.30pm.
Among those supporting the event are vintage shop Dolly Mix, which is providing some of the actor’s costumes, Madeleine Kerslake, who will be taking photographs of the night’s activities so audiences can remember their trip back in time, and the legendary film studio Hammer itself.
The film is being shown as part of .
Posted on Monday 22 February 2016