Cinematics

One consequence of Lynne Choona Featherstone being elected as MP for Hornsey and Wood Green is that it pretty much scuppers any heavyweight political support for the Crouch End for the People (CEfP)'s bid to rescue Hornsey Town Hall from Haringey Council's sell-off. Choona has made it clear that she is not only a) extremely ill-informed on this issue, despite owning at least three properties in the area, one of which is almost directly behind the town hall itself, but also b) fully in support of the Lib Dem councillors' proposals for the sell-off and not the CEfP's plans to run the town hall as a community project, complete with an arts cinema. Barbara Roche (and, to be fair, the local Conservative candidate) had always given CEfP their full backing. Having participated in a free tour of Hornsey Town Hall last year, I can only confirm that it is a truly amazing art deco building, worthy of attention being lavished on it after years of neglect. However, it is immediately obvious that renovating it would prove a nightmare: its electric wiring lays hidden beneath impossible-to-remove marble panels, its main chamber is riddled with asbestos, its bannister railings are too low to satisfy health and safety officers' concerns for the welfare of hyperactive children, and its theatre has officially been relegated to the "deathtrap" category of fire service regulations and long since closed.

But when I heard that the marvellous PictureHouse chain were in discussions with CEfP, my heart filled with hope. I trusted them to somehow pull it off. It is my dearest wish that Crouch End get its own cinema. Film is how I make my livelihood and whilst the local Blockbusters contains various DVDs I have worked on (Wicker Park being the latest addition to its shelves), cinema is my number-one passion, the more obscure and foreign the better. It's the one facility that my beloved Crouch End lacks - you can while away hours reading the Guardian in a pavement cafe, get a decent German beer in at least two different bars, have long Tempranillo-fuelled lunches in tapas bars, buy excellent pesto in the Italian deli and delicious champagne in the wine merchants, and (just so I prove that I do think beyond the culinary from time to time) get your hair cut in at least ten different organic hair salons. But see a film? No chance. For that delight, you have to head up to Muswell Hill Odeon, which has to be the worst-run cinema in the universe. It has a skeleton staff of usually, well, one, who has to try to sell tickets, serve popcorn, clean the auditoria and let people into the screens all at the same time, meaning that most of these duties get neglected and all sorts of scum gets allowed in to hurl empty drinks cartons down into the disused pit that was once the ground floor of Screen One, sit in the expensive luxury seats when they've only paid for normal price tickets, rustle a cacophony of sweetwrappers and slurp on stinking hotdogs, and chat loudly on their mobile phones throughout the latter half of the film. And cleaning the toilets is just a dim and distant memory from when the ground floor probably still had seats.
Even if the town hall proposals are never realised (and the fact that McDonalds want to move into the empty PowerHouse store next door means that any idealistic vision of a European-style piazza in front of the town hall will probably vanish in a stench of Big Mac wrappers and potato-lacking fries), there must be an alternative site somewhere in Crouch End where a cinema could be born. After all, for years, City Screen in York had to make do with a lecture theatre in the Yorkshire Museum, but its staff's knowledge, expert programming and just plain old love of film still makes it rate as one of the best cinemas I've ever been to. We must be able to do the same here.

REBECCA