Back to Bollywood

Part of that process included definitively confirming, once and for all, the timeline of the Picture House building itself. What of the hotel myth that had followed us around for so long? What were the changes it had undergone in over a century of living a full life?

The parallel joy to that has been getting a better grasp on the use of the building, seeking to understand the people who have visited and created memories throughout our 110 years. Because to understand one thing you must understand the other.

The treasure trove of detritus, sweet wrappers, cigarette packs, and more, discovered on site during the building works was phenomenal for just that, painting a picture of the people who had passed through our doors and drawing a connecting line between patrons of the past and audiences of today.

What was so wonderful about that discovery was that it gifted us something tangible to work with. So much of the Picture House’s history is sporadic in what has been documented and how it has been recorded. Or it is beautifully ephemeral. Stories passed along in person, sometimes once in passing, sometimes again and again, with warmth and love between friends, colleagues, audiences. 

One such story that I’ve heard often over my years at the cinema has been about the Bollywood screenings we used to host on Sundays, particularly throughout the 70s and 80s.

For a generation of Hyde Park locals this weekly event was a first and defining interaction with the Picture House. It was formative and is very much missed. Whilst distinctly present in a collective memory about the cinema, these screenings and how they came about were sadly absent from our records. 

That’s why it was perhaps one of the biggest joys as part of the last few years of our refurbishment and research work that we were able to meet and talk with Rocky Sagoo, whose father in the early 1960s first initiated Bollywood screenings at the Picture House, aided by the then Manager, Len Thompson, uncle of Geoff Thompson, before he himself carried them on for over a decade.

With a hire fee of just £25 in the early days, the Sagoo’s took over the Picture House late on a Sunday morning, often with a double feature of the latest Bollywood titles. The screenings started quietly, but at their peak audiences would queue around the corner to attend. There were people of all ages and it felt like a true family affair, with babies and grandparents all along for the ride.  

These screenings felt like a natural fit in the cinema, in part because of the wider programme of foreign language films the Thompsons were increasingly programming at that time. It made sense that Indian and more broadly, new South Asian cinema sat alongside the best in European work.

How and why we’ve lost our way with that balance over the years is difficult to pin down and will be for a multitude of reasons, but it’s also something we now have the opportunity to pick apart and  hopefully reinstate for current and future audiences.

Part of that work, now that we have finally got back into the (semi) normal day to day business of running the Picture House, is weaving the details of this chapter in our history more fully into our definitive story. We are lucky to have friends to aid us in working on that.

Bringing this rich world of cinema into our programme as a living breathing thing for audiences of today to enjoy, has been more challenging in some ways. But we have been lucky that since we have reopened there has been a glut of brilliant new South Asian films released in the UK including titles like All We Imagine As Light, Girls will be Girls, In Flames and Santosh (which is released in March).

We’ve also been lucky to be able to work with the Yorkshire Indian Film Festival to bring a host of brand-new films not widely released in the UK for special screenings as part of the festival and linked to the wider London Indian Film Festival.

But what of Bollywood? Where should that sit in our programme now? Especially in a time when our friends at the multiplexes do such a great job of celebrating this type of cinema with their regular new release programme.

When the cinema was closed it was deep and insightful conversations we had with the wonderful team at Leeds Muslim Youth Forum who suggested an initial way to engage with classic Bollywood, which might give a path for our future.

Thanks to the support of Aman Dhillon, we’ve been able to find a pairing of wonderful Golden and Classic age Bollywood titles to bring into the Picture House over the next month. It’s a treat to share them on the big screen and we are grateful to all the friends and partners who have made this possible. We hope you will join us for one of them, whether you have seen them a million times before or are watching with new eyes, full of wonder.