In October 1910, the New Cross Cinematograph Theatre, just off Lewisham High Road, hosted its first film. The masses of south-east London were for the first time able to see the wonders of the world and beyond though cinema, seeing life and light and time and motion caught on cameras and looped for their eternal viewing and pleasure. Over the decades, film evolved through innumerable different forms, with imagery preserved on emulsion and magnets through to binary computer codes. Now, on the site of that Cinematograph, a century after it opened, we are creating a portal that loops back to that time and space and charting the ensuing journey of how we captured and represented the light of life.
On October 22, 1910, the Mayor and Mayoress of Greenwich & Deptford, first among other dignitaries and locals, were shown into a magnificent ‘palace’ as local reports called it, to attend the Cinematograph’s inaugural event. In the late afternoon, after tea and a performance by a Ladies’ orchestra, the attendees were shown several films and photos of local events and groups, including footage of the activities of the Brockley 1st Scout Group and Camp. The event was a great success and cinema was firmly established in the area as the great medium of entertainment. However, the New Cross Cinematograph itself shut down within a year, and within a decade the host building was struck by lightning, closed and was ultimately lost to the tides of developments. Only a mosaic bearing the building’s name was left and that too was built upon with a factory arising atop the rubble. However, this manufacturing site has since become an artists’ studio and exhibition space, as the building hosting the Cinematograph once was, and is now to become host to the new New Cross Cinematograph Theatre – a portal to times past, present and future through audio-visual technology.