Britain is a country with a village called Slindon in West Sussex, where old men can visit a cinema showing the old celluloid films of their youth

Joe Cornick, an ardent film lover, is twenty years old and three years ago, in 2019, while studying at school for his A-levels, he undertook a project close to his heart. He wanted to recreate a retro cinema making use of the local village hall 
in Slindon's, 'Coronation Hall', he installed a full 35mm projection facility thanks to a generous donation of equipment from a cinema in Tonbridge that had gone fully digital. Joe said : "I had a big interest in film, and there weren’t any cinemas in the area running 35mm film".

Today, his 'Slindon Cinema' is one of the last cinemas in the world to run only analogue film. Joe said : “It was really quite surprising that there was such a great response from the local community. I think people had become so tired of the multiplex way of doing things – that kind of shuffle in, shuffle out clinical experience of many modern cinemas". 

Apparently, although many audience members were of an older age, keen to reminisce about those cinemas of their youth, Joe found that there are also a significant number of young people who want to experience something different and said : “A lot of my friends and people who know me from the area come to the cinema. We also have students from local universities who come to see the projection box, which is a very rare thing to be able to do. People see the reels and everything and it blows their mind. The rich colours, tones and ‘organic’ feel is something audiences today are still struck by when they see a print projected. For many cinematographers and directors like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino their passion for keeping physical film running both through their cameras and the projectors is testament to its incomparable quality”.

Joe, who works with two projectionists with nearly 50 years of experience between them, said he and colleagues have tried their best to make the cinema a retro experience in every way. This includes using a haze machine that injects atmosphere into the hall, beaming a light from the projection box, and playing old 'Pearl & Dean' trailers before movies.(link) There is even someone in a dicky bow suit at the front of house to welcome the audience.

Films the cinema has screened include 'The Godfather' and 'Battle of Britain', but Cornick is limited by which 35mm prints he can source, so is mostly confined to borrowing from private collectors and studios. This weekend, the cinema will be screening Christmas classic 'It’s a Wonderful Life', which he hopes will bring joy to the local community at a difficult time. He said : “It’s got so much poignance, it isn’t your average Christmas film. It’s about family and realising what we have, not what we don’t have”.(link)

Joe went on : “We have the old trays that go around the neck, carrying ice-cream and snacks. There’s an interval halfway, which everyone loves because it gives them a chance to talk about the film. We have such a diverse audience that there’s people talking about the first time they saw a film decades ago, alongside people who are watching it for the first time. People come to us for a break from sitting in their homes, on their sofa watching TV or Netflix. They come to experience cinema how it should be”. (link)