Cinema in Haslemere
Howard Bicknell discusses the history of cinema at Haslemere Hall.
On my return to live in Haslemere in 2010, I quickly found myself drawn back to Haslemere Hall which for me had been a bit of a home from home in my teenage and early twenties. I had enjoyed both rehearsals performing on the fully equipped stage with the Haslemere Players, and with the Haslemere Thespians performing in musicals, plays and pantomimes.
The Hall is not just for live performances by bands and stage productions but also provides the home for many local societies, clubs, charities and theatre schools. It offers them a place to meet, rehearse, listen to guest speakers, dance and host parties and award ceremonies. It is an amazing space and with the right mind at the helm, it can be turned into almost anything. One of those things was a cinema.
When the Rex cinema closed its doors in November 1986 and was later demolished, it left Haslemere without a large enough venue to show films and Haslemere Hall was approached to fill the void that the Rex cinema closure had had. Screens, speakers and a projector were all brought in, together with expert technical knowledge and the Haslemere Hall Cinema was launched.
Whilst the Rex cinema had predominantly only been for showing films with more than one screening per day, Haslemere Hall had a lot of other responsibilities and commitments and with more and more people owning video recorders and hiring their nightly watch from one of the video rental shops in the town, the number of people going out to the cinema was declining.
Drawing credit: Burt England
This worked well for the new arrangements and meant that the films coming to the Hall could be handpicked. Whilst new Bond films demanded at least 8 screenings which would all be filled to capacity; the Hall could also show just one screening for those with less popular titles but equally as important and encourage people with different interests to become a part of its audience.
Films at the Hall usually start at 8 pm to allow for the many commuters returning from London to be able to get home, have dinner and get out again, although if the films were over three hours in length, quite often the start time was brought forward to 7.30 pm.
More recently, the Hall has branched out to include more specialist screenings and started to show more independent films and documentaries as well as foreign films that are subtitled. The Hall relishes in showing films that don’t have big backers and budgets yet have a great story with an important message. When the lockdown is over, there will be more opportunities for specialist films to be shown at the Hall.
For several years now, Haslemere Hall has been able to screen live events particularly from the Royal Opera House and theatres in London so that the customer coming to the Hall can see the performance live, in real time. This allows them to have a great seat in the house and benefit from the excellent camera work and not be unfortunate enough to have a pillar in the way or watch from an odd angle, or from the very back of the Upper Circle. It means that the audience can see a big show from their local area at the fraction of the price, although doesn’t always beat feeling the atmosphere and feeling the pulse of the performance in action!
At the moment, like all cinemas across the country, Haslemere Hall is unable to show any films under the current restrictions within lockdown. Last year it was still able to open but the capacity had to be arranged from 330 seats to just 155 to ensure social distancing could be accommodated.
Whilst I myself have watched countless movies on Netflix, films, box sets, general television, it’s just not the same as meeting friends at the cinema and watching uninterrupted on the big screen, to then discuss the merits of the film afterwards in the pub. It won’t be long. Hopefully…
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