REEL LOVE
Asher Charman is co-founder of The Castle Cinema, a restored and reinvigorated 1930s cinema in East London
There’s always space to do something different My partner Dee and I started out in pop-up cinema experiences. We set up in all kind of places, but many of the venues have since been lost to make way for new developments. We were looking for our own permanent home when we found what is now the Castle Cinema, the vacant first floor above a convenience store. It jumped out immediately, both because of its history – it opened as a cinema in 1938 and later became a bingo club, shoe factory and snooker hall – and its architecture, with ornate plasterwork and a curved ceiling. We knew it was somewhere we could pour our love into, knowing that it wouldn’t have to be packed away or torn down.
Going to the cinema should be an experience The whole reason we do what we do is to make it special for people. Over the years, it’s become so cookie cutter. Even buying tickets is done by clicking on screens. It’s reduced this form of storytelling to the most banal setting. We really cherish giving cinema back its status.
Getting people to engage helps build a community Our Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the renovation was Dee’s idea – a way of testing whether our idea of bringing the cinema back to life was plausible. It was great fun devising suitable pledges – one bidder got to recreate the famous movie lion roar with their own face! Within one month, we had raised 120% of our original goal. For us, it was a remarkable resource – a form of marketing that helped to create an instant community and to drive us forward.
The details matter Another benefit of the Kickstarter was that we were offered lots of help – from the interiors to our website.
We spent the next year on the renovation – finding 80 comfy armchairs for the seats, then perfecting the spacing of the tiers. Our test screening was at Christmas in 2016. Having our friends and family there to share that moment was brilliant. We’d decided to invest in a great sound system. Seeing and hearing the opening sequence of Trainspotting 2 was a real validation that our decisions had paid off.
Be open to what comes your way I’ve always admired people with a fixed idea of what goals are, but not having that does allow for a bit of excitement. We obviously did a business plan, but we probably wouldn’t have embarked on this project if we’d had a clearer idea of what it involved. A dose of healthy naivety goes a long way!
Prepare to learn everything On a project like this you have to be become about 10 or 12 different departments from marketing to health and safety. The two of us do almost everything. It’s intensely difficult but intensely rewarding.
You get out what you put in There’s a strong community feel where we’re based. And, as much as we can, we try to reciprocate that. We’ve hosted Santa for two years now, for example. But it’s also about being very present – hand-to-hand flyering and personally putting up posters. We now have regulars, such as at our parent and baby screening, so we’re beginning to get to know people – being on first-name terms is a nice sensation.
The work/life balance is something to strive for We’re not there yet. I stopped for lunch today, which is an achievement. We’re heading in the right direction though. After it being so full-on, we’re starting to take time off at weekends. We want to keep giving 100%, so we need to break once in a while – it’s a marathon not a sprint.
Never say never We can now look back and appreciate what we’ve done, as well as looking forward, and I think we’d do it all again. There are so many fantastic spaces that just need a bit of TLC to bring them back to life. Now we’ve had that experience, it should be more straightforward to do it again. Or perhaps that’s complete naivety on my part. There’s just something very lovely about creating your own space and seeing others enjoy it. thecastlecinema.com