By Niall Anderson
To finish Cinema Week on Mostly Film, here is a list of cinemas in the UK threatened with closure or outright demolition. Most of them have action groups or accounts you can donate to. If you’re in the area affected, or just concerned about the preservation of cinemas in general, please consider yourself invited to contribute any way you can:
The EMD Cinema, Waltham Forest
Clerk Street Odeon, Edinburgh (see also The New Victoria)
The David Lean Cinema, Clock Tower, Croydon
King Street Cinema, Hammersmith
The Orion Cinema, Burgess Hill, West Sussex
George Street Cinema, Grays, Essex
The Carlton, Islington, London
The Forum/ABC, Lime Street, Liverpool
Ritz/Robins, Burton on Trent, Staffordshire
We’re sure there are many more cinemas under threat (please feel free to link to campaigns and news in the comments). That it takes a long time to get permission to demolish and rezone a cinema building doesn’t mean that time isn’t pressing. Still, with commitment and the cooperation of local authorities, communities can have major successes, so don’t despair just yet.
Mostly Film returns next week with a bumper offering: the world of high finance in films, cult Australian cinema, the history of Britcoms, and (perhaps still more ambitiously) the history of film itself! In the meantime, here’s Marlon Brando dancing again:
MostlyFilm 
The Odeon, Bradford:
http://www.bradfordodeonrescuegroup.co.uk/
The David Lean cinema, Croydon, closed earlier this year (about early April I think). It was a wonderful, compact (but comfortable) eclectic cinema (and quite incongruous in such a fetid shithole as Croydon). No bigger than the size of a large room, it screened a wonderful mix arty films, retrospectives, current releases, whatever. And it only had a short life, having only opened in the mid 90’s.
Good post Niall – the EMD in Walthamstow is currently closed but I saw this announcemenet in a recent email from the McGuffins group:
‘Following Waltham Forest Council’s decision to refuse planning permission for the conversion of the EMD Cinema into a church, we are delighted to announce that the venue has now been incorporated into the borough’s Area Action Plan for Walthamstow.’
This means that it is likely that there will once again be a local cinema in E17 at some point in the future – fingers crossed.
Andrew
To update this Walthamstow EMD information, the church appealed to the Secretary of State. This further appeal was refused on 23 May 2013.
The EMD is still not home and dry though – the church still owns it. We will have to see what happens next.
Secretary of State grounds for refusal (which might help other threatened cinemas see the sorts of arguments which can win the day) can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_moqzgQn2fZTEJkeUo2X1h1bDg/edit?pli=1