London’s Cinema Museum is at risk of closure

Earlier this year we gave you six reasons to visit the volunteer-run Cinema Museum in Kennington. Now there is a seventh: the Lambeth building – where Charlie Chaplin spent part of his childhood – is at risk of closing down. 

In a lengthy Facebook post on October 16, a member of the team announced that the museum’s landlord, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, is planning the sell the building on the open market as soon as possible. The Cinema Museum’s current lease expires in March 2018. The museum’s founders had intended to buy the property eventually, but the short timeframe now makes such a purchase unlikely. 

The Cinema Museum moved to its nineteenth-century workhouse location almost 20 years ago, creating a home for 1 million movie stills, classic film memorabilia and magazines dating back to the 1900s. But it’s more than an archive: the museum is a place for independent film events, not to mention cult screenings in its Victorian auditorium. It also functions as a training resource for students and a social space for this city’s film-obsessed. 

But it’s not over yet. A petition has been set up in an effort to secure The Cinema Museum’s future: you can find it here. 

Are you one of this city’s film-obsessed? Feast your peepers on these pretty cinemas.