The surprising rhythms of a 24-hour cinema

The movie theatre has become a space fraught with controversy, and rarely because of the film being screened. It feels as if we rarely see out the month without someone complaining online about the flagrant disregard of cinema etiquette, be that attendees talking loudly, using their phones during the film or guffawing at inappropriate moments. This behaviour is so commonplace that the Prince Charles Cinema has done away with its kitschy John Waters pre-movie public service announcement and replaced it with a polite but pointed request for audience members to ​“be in the movie, not above it”. 

But what if there was a space that – instead of reinstating the etiquette of the cinema – actively encouraged its attendees to rebel against it? This was Dan Wilkinson’s intention, when he decided to put on a free 24 Hour Cinema event in Kentish Town as part of his event cinema programme Double Wonderful. Inviting attendees to stay for as little or as long as they wished, with no fixed start times and no pre-release of the titles on display, Dan set out to create a cinematic setting that indulged in the chaos of the public rather than denying it. After three cups of coffee, armed with a cushion, I turned up to see what an event that promised to throw out the cinema’s rulebook would be like. So did 160 other curious attendees who came and went across the 24 hours.

With each hour this makeshift theatre’s atmosphere was calibrated by the ebbs and flows of an ever changing audience. Runners popped in while they caught their breath and attendees dropped by while going about their daily chores. When I arrived at 10pm there were guests who stepped into the space the same way one enters a library, creeping delicately towards vacant chairs, but by midnight the place was humming with a vibrant crowd matching the chaotic energy of Brian De Palma’s Hi Mom! on screen. A fizzing chorus came in fits and starts from the aisles as tinnies and bottles were cracked open, with a backing track of voices as the crowd claimed and relinquished their places.

I once watched Pulse next to a man whose nicotine addiction required him to leave the venue multiple times during what is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s most thrilling films, with pungent wafts of stale cigarette smoke building each time he returned to the neighboring seat. For the first time ever I thought of that restless stranger fondly – he belonged here.

Per Double Wonderful’s manifesto for the event, every film was delivered with a cold open, encouraging attendees to relinquish control of their viewing experience. This refusal to offer transparency questions our need to turn cinema (like almost all hobbies) into a logged, promoted and therefore braggadocious sport, diminishing every film to a statistic while encouraging completionist habits. Many audience members happily embraced this imposed spontaneity; when the title card for François Ozon’s X2000 lit up the screen, someone behind me gasped, ​“It’s a French one, I’m gonna have to stay!”

Playing title roulette at the cinema might not be for everyone – Barry Pierce once likened the Prince Charles Cinema’s Mystery Movie Marathon to an obscure form of torture where the victim is slowly devoured by insects – but there are clearly those who enjoy this game. Of course it helps when the programmer has more interest in inspiring (and titillating) attendees than punishing them. Alongside the household names were many lesser known and rarely screened titles, such as Boris Gerrets’ People I Could Be And Maybe Am (in which one man with a handheld camera becomes entangled in the lives of his nocturnal subjects), Sion Sono’s nihilistic Yakuza movie Bad Film, and, aptly, Arran Ashan and Mustafa Mohamoud’s 6 TILL 6 documenting 24 hours in East London. Dan had no intended themes running through his setlist, but saw many of the titles as ​“filmic orphans” as they are titles that ​“nobody else would take a chance on”. 

It’s a sentiment which the space itself echoed, as overnight it became a home for those who didn’t want to go to bed or the chicken shop after every other venue had closed its doors. Comfortably propped up against the wall were Kleo and Abijan. Kleo had only been awake for the past hour when I spoke to him, having dozed off from about 6am till 9am. He has nothing of the groggy disgruntled air you would expect from a man surviving on very little sleep, explaining the space is calming to him because it’s a place for ​“the day’s rejects”. But not all that attended the 24 Hour Cinema had come to test their endurance levels. Abijan didn’t feel the need to commit like Kleo did, only joining him in daylight hours. ​“I’m gonna come watch a film for breakfast,” she said.