The movie theatre has become aspace fraught with controversy, and rarely because of the film being screened. It feels as if we rarely see out the month without someone complaining online about the flagrant disregard of cinema etiquette, be that attendees talking loudly, using their phones during the film or guffawing at inappropriate moments. This behaviour is so commonplace that the Prince Charles Cinema has done away with its kitschy John Waters pre-movie public service announcement and replaced it with apolite but pointed request for audience members to “be in the movie, not aboveit”.
But what if there was aspace that – instead of reinstating the etiquette of the cinema – actively encouraged its attendees to rebel against it? This was Dan Wilkinson’s intention, when he decided to put on afree 24 Hour Cinema event in Kentish Town as part of his event cinema programmeDouble Wonderful. Inviting attendees to stay for as little or as long as they wished, with no fixed start times and no pre-release of the titles on display, Dan set out to create acinematic setting that indulged in the chaos of the public rather than denying it. After three cups of coffee, armed with acushion, Iturned up to see what an event that promised to throw out the cinema’s rulebook would be like. So did 160 other curious attendees who came and went across the 24hours.
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With each hour this makeshift theatre’s atmosphere was calibrated by the ebbs and flows of an ever changing audience. Runners popped in while they caught their breath and attendees dropped by while going about their daily chores. When Iarrived at 10pm there were guests who stepped into the space the same way one enters alibrary, creeping delicately towards vacant chairs, but by midnight the place was humming with avibrant crowd matching the chaotic energy of Brian De Palma’sHi Mom!on screen. Afizzing chorus came in fits and starts from the aisles as tinnies and bottles were cracked open, with abacking track of voices as the crowd claimed and relinquished their places.
I once watchedPulse next to aman whose nicotine addiction required him to leave the venue multiple times during what is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s most thrilling films, with pungent wafts of stale cigarette smoke building each time he returned to the neighboring seat. For the first time ever Ithought of that restless stranger fondly – he belonged here.
Per Double Wonderful’s manifesto for the event, every film was delivered with acold open, encouraging attendees to relinquish control of their viewing experience. This refusal to offer transparency questions our need to turn cinema (like almost all hobbies) into alogged, promoted and therefore braggadocious sport, diminishing every film to astatistic while encouraging completionist habits. Many audience members happily embraced this imposed spontaneity; when the title card for François Ozon’sX2000 lit up the screen, someone behind me gasped, “It’s aFrench one, I’m gonna have tostay!”
Playing title roulette at the cinema might not be for everyone –Barry Pierce once likened the Prince Charles Cinema’s Mystery Movie Marathon to an obscure form of torture where the victim is slowly devoured by insects – but there are clearly those who enjoy this game. Of course it helps when the programmer has more interest in inspiring (and titillating) attendees than punishing them. Alongside the household names were many lesser known and rarely screened titles, such as Boris Gerrets’People ICould Be And Maybe Am (in which one man with ahandheld camera becomes entangled in the lives of his nocturnal subjects), Sion Sono’s nihilistic Yakuza movieBad Film, and, aptly, Arran Ashan and Mustafa Mohamoud’s 6TILL 6 documenting 24hours in East London. Dan had no intended themes running through his setlist, but saw many of the titles as “filmic orphans” as they are titles that “nobody else would take achance on”.
It’s asentiment which the space itself echoed, as overnight it became ahome for those who didn’t want to go to bed or the chicken shop after every other venue had closed its doors. Comfortably propped up against the wall were Kleo and Abijan. Kleo had only been awake for the past hour when Ispoke to him, having dozed off from about 6am till 9am. He has nothing of the groggy disgruntled air you would expect from aman surviving on very little sleep, explaining the space is calming to him because it’s aplace for “the day’s rejects”. But not all that attended the 24 Hour Cinema had come to test their endurance levels. Abijan didn’t feel the need to commit like Kleo did, only joining him in daylight hours. “I’m gonna come watch afilm for breakfast,” shesaid.