“There is nothing, that can match the compulsive magic of that big screen in a darkened auditorium. We may have become more sophisticated in the way moving pictures are made today but the essential cinema-going experience has not changed”
Cinema has the same capacity to seduce, influence and to overwhelm as it did 120 years ago.
You could race with Ben-Hur’s chariot, join Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, enjoy a Brief Encounter with Celia and Trevor, fly a Spitfire and Reach for the Sky. ride the range with John Wayne, Carry On Up the Khyber with Kenneth Williams and the gang, fight Star Wars, run from T Rex in Jurassic Park and attend Four Weddings and a Funeral!
An estimate in 1936 on audience attendance at Doncaster cinemas in a normal week was round about 50,000. Within the town boundaries there were seven sites accommodating over 10,000 patrons, used exclusively for showing films.
Patron Mr Brian Blessed OBE
Save the last piece of Doncaster's Cinema Heritage dumped in a Cemetery!
To celebrate 120 years of going to the pictures, let’s toast this Doncaster cinema celebration with a pint of Kinema.
From the first public screening of films in Fairground tents, Penny Gaffs, Dream Palaces to today’s Multiplex, a commemorative beer in celebration of Doncaster’s Cinema-going Heritage. Past, Present and Future.
Aims
The main aims of this web site are to:
Bring Cinema history to as wide an audience as possible.
Provide a way of gathering and sharing the technical and architectural detail about the sites and the film memories from both official and private sources.
To generate and promote ‘100 Years of Cinema Come to Life’ with events and projects relating to Doncaster Cinema, in order to foster a critical understanding of the historical and social implications of the medium