The Rex Cinema, Coalville: A Little Art Deco Palace

This is the Coalville Rex cinema. The last film it ever screened was 'Champions' starring John Hurt in 1984. The Rex was a two-screen cinema, with Screen 1 being situated at the top of a long staircase that took audiences to a large upper circle. Screen 2 had been built at a later date in the stalls area of the main auditorium.

For many years since the cinema's closure it has been used as a Dunelm Mill shop selling homeware and soft furnishings. Dunelm have been sympathetic to the interior of the cinema and very few alterations have been made.

If you visit the shop and concentrate on the architecture rather than the shelves of towels and bed linen you can find many tell tale signs about the Rex's former Art Deco splendour.

Entrance steps and sign for the buffet:












Foyer ceiling:






Corridor leading to screens 1 and 2 (the buffet was positioned on the right side and the box office on the left):







Floor and stained glass ceiling in the box office area:



















Main staircase leading to Screen 1:













Curved walls leading to fire exits in Screen 2 / stalls area of auditorium:












The above two photos are taken in the main shopping area of Dunelm Mill. A suspended ceiling above this area hides the cinema's auditorium from public view. However, a recent article in the Leicester Mercury shows that the cinema space itself is largely untouched.





(Above photo taken from the Leicester Mercury).

Dunelm are due to close the shop on 26th June 2016. It would be great if The Rex were to reopen as a cinema again. It would be a tragedy if the interior of this cinema is lost forever.

Latest Journal Article: ‘Representations of the family in postwar British amateur film: family histories in the Lane and Scrutton collection at the East Anglian Film Archive’, in The History of the Family journal

Here is an overview of my latest journal article for those interested in:

• home movies


• representations of the family


• leisure


• postwar social history


• national identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of the postwar British family in amateur film with reference to
the Sidney Lane and Cecil Scrutton collection held at the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), particularly the films covering 1948 – 1961.

Heather Norris Nicholson argues that home movies contribute to ‘an understanding of leisure and visual- related practices of consumption as well as the social processes by which people came
to give themselves, and others, identities’ in the mid-twentieth century (Nicholson, H. N. [2004]. At Home and Abroad with Cine Enthusiasts: Regional Amateur Filmmaking and Visualizing the Mediterranean, ca. 1928 – 1962’. Geojournal,
49, 323–333).

By considering the social and historical contexts in which these home movies were produced, and using accompanying notes by one of the filmmaker’s sons, the leisure time films of
Lane and Scrutton can be analysed in order to understand how the amateur cine hobby ideologically constructed family, community and national identity in postwar Britain.

The images of Christmas parties, daytrips and holidays in these films reveal much about this particular family, and are therefore very illuminating to the social historian and film scholar of
today.

My journal article is based on some research I carried out at the East Anglian Film Archive a couple of years ago. Whilst there I viewed the birthday parties, day trips and holidays that the Lanes and Scruttons had filmed in Norfolk and other parts of Britain. I also got to know the family’s history in the 1950s, due to the collection’s reminiscences recorded in a document by one of the filmmakers’ sons.

Family collections such as this provide a fascinating insight into social history, and also how people
represented their leisure activities in amateur film: The cine hobby itself being a leisure pastime – popular with families who could afford it – in the postwar period.

Link to the article / abstract

Why I Reckon Whitby Folk Week is Like Butlin's, Circa 1946

Whitby Folk Week is like a folkies' take on the old fashioned holiday camps.

This is meant in good fun and it may seem controversial to most lovers of folk music and dance(!), but on my first ever visit to Whitby Folk Week this August I couldn't help seeing the comparisons with J.A.R Pimlott's visit to Butlin's at Clacton in 1946.

Part of the schedule Pimlott noted in 1946

With so many activities and entertainments on throughout the week, everything has to be kept to a tight schedule. After purchasing my programme I was able to browse carefully through the itinerary and get an idea of what was on. It was then that the comparison with Butlin's struck me.

Part of the Whitby Folk Week programme

Butlin's 1946: 10am Games and Exercises.

Whitby 2015: 10am Dance workshop.

I took part in a few Longsword workshops. Not a style of dance I'm used to, so it was refreshing to not only get some exercise, but also to focus on learning something new for 90 minutes in the morning.

Butlin's 1946: 11.15am Kiddies' fun.

Whitby 2015: 10am Playtime for children.

Butlin's 1946: 8.30pm Campers' concert.

Whitby 2015: 8pm Concert / or Marathon singaround.

Butlin's 1946: 9pm Ballroom dancing.

Whitby 2015: Evening ceilidhs.

Some of the latter are 'themed' at Whitby Folk Week and fancy dress is encouraged, adding to the raucous seaside atmosphere. This years theme was 'gold'.

Visitors to the Gold Ceilidh

Butlin's 1946: Knobbly Knees contest.

Whitby 2015: A close competition between some of the North West and rapper teams in 2015!

Newcastle Kingsmen

The location by the North Yorkshire coast also gives festival goers the opportunity for time out to take a paddle, a moorland walk (not unlike the organised amble at Butlin's in 1946), and to take part in the cultural practices of the British seaside, such as eating ice creams and fish and chips.

One of the teams pretended to be on a roller coaster ride during the parade

The Whitby hotel, Rosa, has the Butlin's motto hanging in the cafe (also a Shakespeare quote!)

On the Thursday there was an hilariously lighthearted North West dance contest in which four teams competed to raise their knees the highest, dance in straight lines and race a relay, wolfing down a pork pie between runs. The winning side (the Newcastle Kingsmen) won a golden clog for their efforts and performed a victory dance for the watching crowds. It was pure holiday camp. 

Here's a link to a video of the North West Contest

Further reading:

Pimlott, J.A.R (1975 reprint), The Englishman's Seaside.

Atkinson, Sally, (2015) Whitby Folk Week, 50 Years and Counting.

The Story of Children's Television Exhibition

Mr Spoon from Button Moon

This Summer I visited 'The Story of Children's Television' exhibition at The Herbert museum in Coventry.

A nostalgia trip for most of the adults attending, this exhibition covers the years 1946 to the present, and will hopefully tour the UK after September for other people to appreciate. Here are some of the exhibits I enjoyed:

One of the Wooden Tops

Little Ted and Humpty from Playschool - the latter designed by Kristin Baybars,
a  woman I've met, and whom I greatly admire

Finger Mouse from Finger Bobs

A cat, which I did not recognise, from before my time

Lenny the Lion toy

Ali Cat being un-PC and performing with a cigarette on one of the video screens!

A selection of 1980s toys

Battle Cat from Masters of the Universe

Familiar faces from Dramarama

Gordon the Gopher wearing a jacket that Adam Ant had given to him

Pob - the puppet who used to controversially spit at the TV camera, then wipe it off

One irresistible attraction was to dress up as a favourite character and appear behind a giant TV screen...

Hammer Archive, Demontfort University

The Hammer Archive at DMU provides a great insight into the life of many of the Hammer films via the development of their scripts. Not only are there a treasure of unrealised projects housed on the archive shelves, but a quick glance through some of the screenplays here reveals how scripts can change when films go into production.

For example, I had a look at the script for Holiday on the Buses (1973) and found that the final scene in which Stan Butler finds employment on a demolition site was originally to show him laying tarmac on a road.

Whilst there I also had a look at screenplays for Straight on Till Morning (1972), Demons of the Mind (1972) and an unmade gem I forget the name of, but it came across as a terrible misfire somewhere between Tom Jones (1963) and Carry on Dick (1975). Wish I could remember what it was called, (perhaps it was The Haunting of Toby Jugg) but maybe it will feature as part of a proposed script reading / recording that Dr Matt Jones of DMU mentioned to me.



The archive which mostly consists of screenplays (at various stages of the films' production including shooting scripts) plus some publicity material, is open for public access dependent on staff availability and the academic timetable. It is certainly a great resource for all horror buffs and British film researchers.

David McGillivray introduces House of Mortal Sin 8/11/14

                                 

My first experience of a Pete Walker film was catching the final 5 minutes of The Comeback (1978) on late night TV in the 1980s. A screening of House of Whipcord (1974) at a two-day film festival of 1970s trash at the Phoenix, Leicester in the 1990s cemented my addiction.

It was at the Phoenix festival that screenplay writer for Whipcord, David McGillivray autographed his Doing Rude Things book and dedicated it to the 'Twins of Evil' (my brother and I) simultaneously dismissing his own joke as "the usual rubbish".

McGillivray wrote a wonderfully economic script for Pete Walker's House of Mortal Sin (1976) that is both chilling and hilarious. However, he claims not to have seen the film since the cast and crew screening, so embarrassed is he by his work.

McGillivray has an eternally dry wit and self-deprecating sense of humour that is immense fun for the listener. Here he is introducing House of Mortal Sin at the Barbican, London, with Kim Newman, on 8th November 2014 (audio with stills):

YouTube clip of McGillivray's introduction

                                 

Abstract: The Changing Face of the Amateur Holiday Film in Britain as Constructed by Postwar Amateur Cine World (1945-1951)

This is a copy of my abstract from an article I recently had published in the Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television.

The Changing Face of the Amateur Holiday Film in Britain as Constructed by Postwar Amateur Cine World (1945-1951)

Amateur film-making, motoring and holidaymaking were three complementary leisure activities that re-emerged with a greater intensity for middle-class consumers in Britain in the immediate post-war period. The end of restrictions on travel, an increasing availability of film stock and the first real chance to take advantage of the Holidays With Pay Act (the latter of which had been disrupted by the Second World War) created new opportunities for cine enthusiasts to produce a holiday film after 1945.

In this article, I consider how instructional articles on how to make a holiday film may have helped to construct ideologically a sense of British national identity for the middle-class readers of Amateur Cine World between 1945 and 1951. These articles can be mapped closely with the shifting patterns of holiday- making in the post-war period, and tend to encourage cine hobbyists to construct a sense of Britishness through their representations of the holiday; initially through images of the British countryside and coastline, and eventually by the framing of cultural difference in their first holidays abroad. 

A close analysis of this discourse can provide an insight into a construction of class, gender and national identity that is an alternative to the mainstream British feature film, for instance. 

The full article can be found online at:
Matt's Article at Taylor Francis Online