From Hoylake to St Helens, community cinema is making a comeback

Dear readers — welcome to another week in Merseyside news, culture, politics and commentary. So-called “Blue Monday” has been and gone, the solstice is a distant memory, the days are getting longer and things are about to start heating up — not least the Operation Aloft trials. We’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of reporting for you today, including the latest on the Eldonians saga we last updated you on in December. 

In case you missed it, our weekend read was a deep-dive into Peak Cluster and HyNet, the projects to A.) run CO₂ under the Wirral and B.) store millions of tonnes of it under Liverpool Bay respectively. 

Millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas to be piped under Liverpool Bay

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The PostLaurence Thompson

Our piece has already had a sizable response, and Peak Cluster is becoming a major talking point on that side of the Mersey. The same day our investigation went out, the organisation held a consultation meeting at Hoylake Parade Centre which, by all accounts, did not go the way they suspected it would. 

It’s perhaps notable that resistance to the scheme appears to be coming from pockets across the political spectrum. The Conservative councillors for Hoylake, Meols and Central West Kirby reported “anger” in the room as Peak Cluster CEO John Egan tried to explain the project, while the Defend Wirral’s Green Spaces group protested inside the building and out, with one campaigner holding a “NO TO PIPELINE FROM HELL” sign. A member of Wirral Reform described the meeting as “pandemonium.” This is a story that might just be getting started.

The big story: From Hoylake to St Helens, community cinema is making a comeback

Top line: St Helens’ Lucem House has been commended for providing a traditional filmgoing experience. In an age of streaming services and falling cinema attendance, projects like this could be just what the doctor ordered. 

Context: If you want a visual representation of how filmgoing in Liverpool has declined, look no further than the ABC Cinema on Lime Street. The prominent art deco building, one of the first sights visitors might see when they leave the city’s main railway station, once hosted sparkling film premieres attended by film stars and aristocracy. Now, it’s been disused for the best part of thirty years, its once swaggering facade greying with water damage. An urban explorer in 2022 described the interior as smelling “like a dead body”. 

Dwindling audience numbers aren’t entirely to blame, of course. The rise of home television ownership in the latter half of the twentieth century dealt a blow to film audiences across the Western world, while the franchise theatres of large chains like Odeon and Vue meant independent cinemas could no longer compete. My grandmother, now 97, can still reel off (sorry) at least a dozen once-thriving Birkenhead cinemas that no longer exist.

A large, and hopefully not final, nail in the coffin was the double-whammy of streaming services and the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter placing the former in an apparently insuperable position for even the big chain franchises. In an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience last week, Hollywood film star Matt Damon claimed that Netflix now ensures their films’ scripts repeat the plot multiple times so audiences don’t miss anything while scrolling on their mobile phones at home. 

But this era of “passive viewing” has also seen the rise of community cinemas. Over the weekend, the BBC put out a heart-warming piece about Lucem House Community Cinema in St Helens, a 50-seater that puts on Hollywood blockbusters, independent flicks, and even foreign language films. They also host panel discussions about the movies, and encourage audience discussion and participation. 

They’re not the only ones. The Plaza Cinema on Crosby Road arguably suffered a rough start, first opening on the 2 September 1939 and closing again later that day due to the outbreak of the second world war. But now it functions as a volunteer-run community cinema that screens everything from cult films to big budget commercial movies. And what’s more, they’ve managed to sustain this since 1997 after a group of dedicated local women spent years staving off redevelopment efforts and fundraising to reopen as a community project. 

The Parade Centre in Hoylake — the same place the Peak Cluster protests occurred this weekend, incidentally — also doubles as a community film club regularly attended by scores of locals keen to once again watch a classic or recent release among other fans in a public forum. 

There’s also the Bijou up in Southport, another volunteer-run and not-for-profit company that can nevertheless boast a raked auditorium, a high-end projector, 5.1 surround speakers and moving curtains to recreate a slowly dwindling cinemagoing experience. In February, the Bijou will be treating its visitors to showings of a Twin Peaks marathon, Gregory’s Girl, and a National Theatre performance of Hamlet, demonstrating that community cinemas can screen a mix of crowd-pleasers and more demanding art house classics. In fact, this March, the Bijou will be showcasing one of the most challenging film experiences there is: recently deceased Hungarian master director Béla Tarr’s 439-minute epic Sátántangó. If you’ve never given this seven-and-a-half hour heavyweight a try, perhaps Laurence will see you there. 

"When people come to watch a film it's not a question of just walking in and then walking out afterwards, people stay for a while, people have conversations," Rose Davis, volunteer director at Lucem House, told the BBC. "We try to give as much as we can back to the community,” said fellow volunteer director Dave Morris.

Bottom line: While cinema audiences in general continue to diminish, perhaps this is an example of what some call the “ATM phenomenon”: banks and businesses decide they prefer customers to pay with card rather than cash, so they close cash machines, so fewer customers use cash machines, so the banks can point to a decline in cash machine usage as an excuse to close more. Similarly, the cinema-to-TV-screen trajectory seems driven as much by media companies like Netflix as cinemagoers themselves: when audiences have an opportunity to see a good film on a big screen, they take it. There’s something crucial and yet ineffable about turning your phone off and spending two hours fully immersed in a film, and no matter how good, attainable and convenient home screens get, it’s impossible to recreate that sense anywhere else. 

Photo of the week

A beautiful sunrise shot across the Mersey, taken by Reddit user Tomatillo-False last week. 

We’re always keen to feature photos from our readers — if you have a snap you’d like to share please email it to editor@livpost.co.uk for a chance to be featured in our Monday editions.

Your Post briefing 

🎉Good news for the Eldonians! An appeal by Anthony McGann Jr to reconsider his petition to wind up the Eldonian Community Trust has officially been dismissed. Last year, McGann Jr claimed the charity owed him thousands of pounds in legal costs (read our story about that here), and asked for the charity to be wound up. His case was rejected, but he appealed the decision in December. Despite this, last week judge Mark Halliwell said his appeal was refused “on the basis that an appeal would have no real prospect of success and there is no reason…as to why such an appeal should be heard”. Judge Halliwell also ordered McGann Jr to pay £7,852 plus VAT to the Eldonian Community Trust, as well as £1,586 to the Charity Commission. Maureen Price, the vice chair of the Trust, called the dismissal “a real achievement”, adding that “without the steadfast support of those who stood by us, the charity may no longer exist.” Read our full investigation into the Eldonian Village saga here.

🎸You may remember Laurence’s excoriating piece about the closing of the Zanzibar club and how indicative it was of Liverpool squandering its musical legacy. Well, the Zanzi — once a cornerstone of the city’s music scene, hosting such acts as Noel Gallagher, The Libertines and Miles Kane – was all over social media again, as images of the building being gutted circulated. The site’s current owners, JSM, are planning to reopen the old Zanzi in a matter of weeks under the name “McNasty’s”. JSM are also responsible for McCooley’s on Concert Square and the so-called Eric’s on Mathew Street. 

🌳Defections in different directions: After multiple Reform defections in Merseyside earlier this month, Knowsley councillor Chantelle Lunt has now joined the trend— this time defecting from Labour to the Greens. In an announcement last week, Lunt said she could "no longer defend Labour's position on the door step", adding “I campaigned for Labour in 2024 believing that they would bring about a real change for working class people. It's become increasingly clear that they are not delivering that change". Lunt is a former trainee police officer and now an academic, running the Merseyside Black Lives Matter Alliance since 2021. She  joined the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in 2019, but says Labour has since made a number of decisions which have broken voters’ trust. On her defection to the Greens, she said the Green party "are out protecting our green spaces, and the vulnerable in our community."

👮And Kirkdale West councillor Joe Hanson has been charged with a public order offence for causing alarm or distress after an incident at the Rotunda building in Kirkdale last September. Hanson was first elected back in 2000, and is set to appear at South Sefton Magistrates Court on 5 February. He says he intends to stay in his position.

Post Picks 

🎨From now until 27 March you can see a collaboration between Liverpool-born artists Mike Badger and Jeff Young over at Kirkby Gallery. The exhibition is titled The Sacred Memory Bank, and is a collection and placement of lost objects, totemic charms, images and curios. It is free to enter. 

👻From Wednesday until Saturday, The Ghost of Graves End is on at the Unity Theatre. The synopsis of the play goes like this: Charles, a penniless poet who takes a position as a tutor to a peculiar orphan boy, is afflicted by strange dreams and things that go bump in the night. He has to decide: do I stay or get the hell out of here? Find out more here.

🎸On Saturday, the Quarry is hosting Lydia Lunch: the unholy triumvirate of James Johnston (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Faust), Ian White (Barry Adamson) and Lydia herself. Grab a ticket here.

Recommended reads 📖

🏡If you enjoyed Abi’s story on the homes being sold from under vulnerable tenants last week, then this piece by our sister title the Manchester Mill makes for a perfect accompaniment. It uncovers 130 properties purchased by four linked groups, some of which are being used as homeless accommodation.