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Cinema architecture used to be either derided or ignored, but in the
past thirty years over seventy cinemas in Britain have achieved listed
status and many others have been the subject of vigorous conservation
attempts. This paper studies the re-evaluation of cinema architecture
(focusing particularly on cinemas of the 1930s, the decade when most of
the 'super' cinemas were built) and explores the reasons underlying it.
The paper is based on an in-depth study of cinemas in Nottingham and uses
extensive primary sources, particularly the coverage of cinema in the
city's local press.
It situates the re-evaluation of cinema architecture in a broad cultural
context, embracing the development of the conservation movement as a whole,
along with changing notions of popular culture and of history, memory and
nostalgia. Crucially, it asks whether cinema conservation represents an
embrace of popular culture or an example of cultural elitism. The paper
claims that the process of preservation inevitably changes a building's
meaning and renders it self-conscious. It goes on to argue that cinema conservation
is not based wholly on aesthetic factors but that other considerations such
as locality (including the growing importance of local history and personal
memory) are equally significant. |
