BEST ENTREPRENEUR:
CITYSCREEN(ENGLAND)
TONY JONES and LYN GOLEBY

City Screen has carved out a place for itself in the British cinema landscape. Present in 16 cities in England and two in Scotland, its 18 cinemas house 46 screens. The circuit was created in 1989 by Lyn Goleby and Tony Jones, who were working at the time at the Picture House in Cambridge. “This theatre has always been one of the most successful in England,” says Tony Jones. On the strength of this success, and notwithstanding the crisis in English cinema at the time, they started to build up the circuit across the United Kingdom.

Today City Screen presents both commercial and art house films. Indeed, certain of their cinemas are dedicated exclusively to cinema d’auteur, such as the Picture House in Cambridge, which still boasts large audiences. Restructured to house three auditoria in 1999, the cinema has had admissions of one million in the last five years, programming more than a dozen films per week.

Tony Jones points out that the Picture House is sometimes the only cinema outside London to have exclusive premières of films d’auteur, as it did this month with Good Morning, Night by Marco Bellocchio. Eager to present different films and give a prominent place to European cinema, City Screen has participated for the last two weeks in the CinemaNet Europe programme, aimed at releasing digital versions of documentaries.


Lyn Goleby and Tony Jones also do programming for two reputed London complexes, the Curzon Mayfair (2 screens) and the Curzon Soho (3 screens). Although not meant as a venue for cinema d’auteur when it started up, in recent years the Curzon Soho has become a major address for art house film in London. Initially a unique theatre with 650 seats in the heart of London, like its competitors on Leicester Square it ran American and occasionally English films. In 1998 it was entirely transformed and divided into three theatres (250, 130 and 120 seats). Tony Jones was then invited to take over programming. Six years later the Curzon Soho has become an art house institution with a warm atmosphere provided by a large restaurant front opening onto the street.

Tony Jones is happy about winning the Europa Cinemas Prize awarded to City Screen for its ongoing work. For him, “this is a real recognition of our commitment to European cinema in a country largely dominated by American productions.”

(November 2004)

www.picturehouses.co.uk