Scala!!!

Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's 2024 documentary is about a cinema that ran for years in London. The Scala showed several films on one ticket, and its programme held horror, experimental cinema and banned productions together. The interest is whom the place made room for. It is described as a refuge for people with nowhere to stay, for those who spent the night there and for different communities meeting; the relation between the programme and the audience is placed at the centre. John Waters, Isaac Julien and audience members of the period speak. The cinema closed after a lawsuit over an unlicensed screening, and the documentary reports that ending. Archive material and posters take wide space. Who it's for: those curious about film culture and Britain in the eighties. Who it's not for: viewers wanting information about particular films; the documentary tells the venue, not the programme.