What's on

SCALA! Screening

You are invited to a special screening of SCALA!!!
on Thursday 6th February 2025

5.15pm Reception, Upper Foyer, Alexander Building, Thornlea, where you can meet the film’s co-directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, as well as film critic Mark Kermode, and discuss working in directing, journalism, criticism, and cinemas.

6pm Screening of Scala!!! in TS5 Screening Room, Alexander Building followed by Q&A with Jane and Ali, chaired by Mark

SCALA!!! is a feature-length documentary about the amazing Scala cinema in London. The Scala is still a place of legend - part art cinema, part midnight-movie destination, kitsch and experimental and path-breaking in its programming, for its passionate audiences, and as an inspirational space for filmmakers. The film is hugely entertaining, even if you've never heard of the Scala - a story about cinema as a social force, about cinema as transforming people's lives and identities, about inventive film programming, all intersecting with the key social movements of the times - censorship and taboo, LGBTQ movements, British politics in the 80s and 90s.

NOTE: Some of the clips included in the film are still a bit shocking, if brief, so the British Board of Film Classification has given the film an 18 certificate, with the note reading: ‘This documentary covers the rise and fall of London's legendary Scala cinema, between 1978 and 1993. It includes clips of many cult and art house films which played there, with brief moments of strong sexual content.’ Therefore you must be 18 or over to attend this screening.