All language subtitles for Cabinet of Curiosities.mkv2

Hello, this is Jane Giles. I'm the co
-director of Scala and I'm here to take

you behind the scenes of some of the
objects in the Scala archive.

Here's the first one.

It's the main tool of the trade for the
Scala programmers.

It's a landline telephone and an index
card box that's stuffed full of phone

numbers and addresses of the
distribution companies and the sources

that we booked to screen as part of the
Scala programme.

And here you can see the red telephones
in action in the Scala office in Kings

Cross. The photograph was taken in
August 1981 by David Babsky, a

great photographer and Scala enthusiast,
also the executive producer of our

film. On the left, you can see Jane
Pilling, programmer who specialised in

animation. And on the right, you can see
Stephen Woolley, hard at work there,

having a good think about which films to
show as part of the Scala programme.

Scholar office had shelves full of
books, reference books about film and

just a few of the ones that you would
have seen there and the programmers

endlessly flick through these books
looking for new ideas and searching for

titles that they wanted to seek out and
for more information about films that

were available in distribution
collections but they might not have seen

known about.

Cult movies, Danny Peary really kind of
broke the mould in terms of

understanding of what a certain type of
psychotronic film was.

To an extent also the Medved's book, The
Golden Turkey Awards.

But you can see there are also
experimental film books like Films of

Art and Dwoskin's film is, these kind of
movies appeared at Scala as well.

And here's an example of one of the many
film catalogues, film distribution

catalogues, that were on the shelves of
this Gala Programmers Office.

Contemporary Films was a company run by
Charles and Kitty Cooper and, latterly,

Eric Litnitsky, and they had an
incredible collection of European art

some American films.

These are the film rental control books
in which the Scala programmers would

enter the details of every film shown at
Scala in terms of who the distributor

was, what the terms of the booking were,
what the financial terms of the booking

were. and it's organised by programme
date and there you can see November

1989 I think and the very first film
showing is indeed one from the

Contemporary Films catalogue, a film
called Virgin which was double billed

Palace's own film Wish You Were Here.

Here's an example of this gala in the
early days in Tottenham Street doing a

of market research to get an idea about
what its audience wanted to see as well

as what they had seen and to get some
more feedback about what they thought

about the cinema and the cafe and that
sort of thing. So you can have a look at

some of the responses there.

The ideas that people put about the
films that they wanted to see was a

good way for the Scala programmers to
gather more thoughts and gather more

information about what to show.

Here's another example of how the Scala
audience would put forward their ideas

about what they wanted to see at Scala
and their own programming ideas.

On the left there's a fantastic bit of
artwork that you can see someone's drawn

for us along with great big long lists,
well lists of triple bills and

ideas for movies all nicely written up.

And next to it there's a flyer made by
Jade Screen which eventually

became the Jackie Chan fan club in terms
of the nature of its programming and

this was when the Scala started doing
East Asian martial arts films and

films.

The Scala was able to show films not
classified by the BBFC, the British

Film Censorship, later the British
Border Film Classification, because it

registered as a club, a membership club.

The membership cost, I think, 50 pence
at its most, started at 20p, ended at

50p. And what was little known about the
Scala was it did actually have

membership rules and regulations.

And here you can see what some of those
regulations are.

In the mid -1980s, the Scala introduced
a selection box into its foyer so that

its audience members could make
formalised suggestions about what they

see programmed at the Scala and there
were these little slips of paper and

little crappy little pens that you could
use to fill in and post your ideas into

the box and every morning the Scala
programmer would have a look at these

to see if there was anything
programmable and

Many good ideas came out of the
suggestion box.

Also lots of rubbish too.

Once the upcoming scholar programme had
been put together on paper by the

programmers, they'd take the film
titles, the timings and the information

for the programme off to the programme
designer, 2D Design, which was on

Cross Road.

And they would take about three days to
put together the artwork that would then

become the scholar.

fold -out programme that we know and
love. And this is the 2D's own copy

of the Pantone Selector book, which we
would flick through

and find different colours and different
combinations of colours.

And you can see that Pantone 109U is
actually the

same.

Pantone colour as the bit of paper that
the book is here sitting on.

In addition to creating the Scala's
monthly programme, 2D would also

make special event tickets for us and I
love these. This is the

Scala's 10th anniversary celebration
tickets in its King's Cross building.

And one of them gives entrance to a
party and a screening and the other

one, I think, just gives entrance to the
party.

I don't remember which one is which.

Obviously, as you can see, they're based
on the SCARLE programme.

They're very cute.

This is a photograph of the Scala's box
office returns and cafe returns book, a

ledger that was kept up from day one to
the end of days.

And this one is from March, April 1992,
so just a few months

after the Scala's 10th anniversary in
King's Cross.

um it's an interesting book for me
because you can see the quite wide

between the success of films that were
shown um this is like quite a

healthy um quite a healthy month you can
see sort of like at the lower end um

films coming in at like there

double bill of the adams family and
monsters go home 234 pounds for the

day but you can contrast that with um

A Sunday screening of Almodovar, Triple
Bill, Women on the Verge of a Nervous

Breakdown and two other films, Laura's
Desire, What Have I Done to Deserve

that's reaching towards £2 ,000 for the
day on the box office.

We sort of broke even around about £5
,000 a week on the box office with the

cafe sort of reflecting the attendances
in the cinema.

This is a contact sheet of photographs
taken on a special event day at the

Scala. This was when Brian Clements came
to introduce some Avengers films.

programmes that were actually shot on
film and shown at the Scala by WTVA,

Television Access, a group of
enthusiasts who were keeping British

alive at the time. You can see how
popular the event was by the queues

the block.

Every time a John Waters film showed at
the Scala cinema it felt like a special

event and polyester certainly which came
with these fabulous scratch and

sniff cards in glorious odorama that
showed several times at the Scala and

blob smelt with something different. I
think it was meant to be roses, new car

and all sorts of things but I think
mostly they just smell like farts.

Here's another piece of 2D artwork for a
popular special event that happens at

the Scala cinema.

Preview of David Cronenberg's new film,
Naked Lunch, obviously based on the book

by William S. Burroughs. It was a sold
out screening and it was the headline

event as part of a special season
programme by myself with Damon Wise. And

was dedicated to the films of Cronenberg
and films featuring William S.

Burroughs.

One of the other things we did at the
Scala to try and raise a bit of extra

was to make t -shirts for sale and here
you can see Scala staff modelling two of

the styles that we came up with in the
early 90s. On the left is Alex Fenner

with the Scala logo t -shirt and on the
right John Cranmer wearing as you'll

remember from the Scala's 10th
anniversary tickets the image of the

programme.

And speaking of Scala staff, here's
somebody else who was very dear to the

of the Scala in the late 80s and early
90s. It's Mary Hansen. She was an usher

at the Scala and often worked the all
-nighters.

She was a wonderful musician who played
in a then -emerging band called

Stereolab. She was one of our favourite
people. You can see her briefly in the

end of the Scala documentary, ascending
the stairs towards the party and the

end of Scala party happening on the roof
with her friend Deborah Salter.

Very sadly, Mary died in a cycling
accident in London several years later.

Scala was a cinema which loved music.
The projectionist would play fantastic

music on the public PA system between
the films in the intermissions, the 10

-minute intermissions between the films.

And there was always music playing in
the Scala programming office and in the

cafe. So here's the Scala's Boogie Box.

sort of that music uh i don't know if
this is the program office version or

uh cafe version i don't remember but i
think it's like 80s early 90s

the scholar used to get a lot of posts
obviously this is before email and uh

and so it was all done in the uh in the
in the old style and here's a letter

from uh March 1993, when the Scala was
battling the

imminent closure of the cinema due to
the fact that its lease was running out

and there was still a notice of
compulsory purchase hanging over the

underlying lease of the building, making
it really hard to raise the finance to

redevelop the cinema.

Also the Scala was struggling because
its parent company, Palace Pictures, had

gone under and Stephen Woolley and Nick
Powell, the directors of Palace, were

also the directors of the Scala Cinema.

So all of this was swirling around in
addition to the fact that the Clockwork

Orange case was kind of bubbling under,
had come to a head by this point.

Alex Fenner, who's actually not a
mister, he's a muse, he'd written to

Smith, who lived locally in King's
Cross, asking if he could do anything to

save the Scala.

And as you can see from his response,
all he could really do was wish us good

luck.

And here's one of the other contributing
factors to the demise of the Scala,

namely the rise and rise of VHS and home
video.

Initially, it had been very expensive to
get hold of the machines.

There was the war between Betamax and
VHS, and often you had to hire the

machines as well as rent the tapes,
which you had to return.

But by the time that...

they became of a price that you could
actually buy them and have them at home.

Cinema was really sort of struggling in
repertory terms.

Home video was very new and much more
desirable, particularly at a time of

recession when cinemas were a bit
dilapidated.

So there we have the Evil Dead Palace's
first acquisition.

10 years earlier in 1981 and of course a
huge hit and Faster

Pussycat which was an American import
which I bought from Balcroce's

Psychotronic video store up in Camden.

The Scala never had video projection.

If it had, it would have been able to
show a much wider range of material than

it actually did. Everything that we
screened was on 35mm or 16mm.

And here is a photograph of Billy Bell,
who was a projection engineer.

The picture was actually taken also by
David Babsky back in the summer of 1981,

when the Scala was newly opening in
King's Cross.

You can see Billy servicing the
machines.

He was the engineer for many cinemas in
London, but certainly for the Scala

right through until the very end in June
1993.

In June 1993, the Scala directors pulled
the plugs on the company and not

wanting to get into the kind of debt
which Palace Pictures had incurred and

having the energy for it really by that
point.

We still had an idea that we might be
able to move to another premises, but in

fact that never happened. One of the
reasons why we kept so many objects, the

film ledger books and the reference
books and all those kind of materials,

with the idea that we might one day
reopen the Scala and we might need those

contact details and all the other bits
and bobs.

Here's a letter outlining, written by
Alex Fenner to the Scala membership.

and audience explaining the closure of
the Scala.

Thirty years after the Scala closed in
June 1993, we had the world premiere

of Scala, the film that hopefully you've
been watching on this disc.

And here's the clapperboard that we
used.

The DOP was Sarah Appleton, who filmed
the interviews

that Ali Cashroll and myself directed
with our cast of 50

interviewees inside the Scala which is
now a music venue in Kings Cross and the

current management have kept the
building beautifully and they allowed us

Covid

access to the building which was still
closed as a music venue in the months

following the pandemic but we were able
to gain

access to record our interviews and

The interviewees, they really responded
to being back in the building for the

first time in decades and you could
literally feel the hairs rising on their

arms and their back of the necks as the
trapdoors of the memories reopened.