Icon of the Week: The Ultimate Picture Palace

by Sienna Wadhwani | January 19, 2025

 

“We want to make people feel like there’s a chance it could all burn down in a moment. Because that’s more fun.”

 

I’m sat with Kit Finnie, lead projectionist at the Ultimate Picture Palace. Over the course of our conversation, one thing becomes apparent: the UPP is something that neither of us can shut up about. In our defence, it’s got plenty going for it. It’s one of the first purpose-built cinemas in the country, built in 1911 (extraordinary, because as Finnie tells me, “If you think of what was going on in 1911 cinema-wise, there wasn’t very much”). Since then it has been closed, reopened, and run as a squat-cum-midnight-movie-parlour before assuming its Ultimate, community-owned form. It’s also one of the dwindling number of cinemas still projecting 35mm film—hence her earlier pronouncement. “We do tell people it’s film… we want to create a bit of atmosphere. There is an element of risk—not for fires! But the film might break, definitely.” If she’s projecting 35mm film, she sits, still, watching it for the whole runtime. “There’s that kind of magical thinking that’s like, if I look away for a second, it’s all going to crash and burn.”

 

Physical film used to be the standard until relatively recently, about 2011. Despite this, there’s a sense of the uncharted about the whole thing—a thought that returns to me as Finnie leads me up a tiny ladder and through the crawlspace into the projection room (“Don’t sit up right away!”, she warns—I wonder if she’s speaking from experience). There are two projectors, hulking and magnificent: one digital, one film. The space is theirs. “The whole projection room is kind of alive, because the film has to travel across the whole room”—from one wheel, across, into and out of the projector, and back across to the tower where it spools.

 

Projecting film like this is a dying art, and something those at the UPP consciously try to keep alive. There is something deliciously tactile about this analogue process, and it’s not just bound to the physical film itself. The projector is a living embodiment of this, made up from all different parts accumulated over the years. When it needed servicing, a new motor was found through random personal connection (“[The mechanics] were like, ‘I know a guy in Wales who might have one like that.’”)

 

One thing I’m taken by is the feeling of adventure, possibility, on-the-fly ingenuity. Listening to Finnie, you get the sense that the thrill of film projecting—and it is, clearly, a thrill—comes from the rush of improvised problem-solving and the reward of it paying off.  “It feels a bit like the Wild West”, she tells me, beaming. Cinema-ing in this way is reliant on networks of knowledge that, pleasingly, defy the digital. If something goes wrong, Finnie can’t just look up the answer: “it’s so niche that… I have to talk to people. And there’s something really, really great about that”.

 

I imagine a large part of Finnie’s enthusiasm comes from the fact that everyone in the orbit of this place seems genuinely fascinating. The cinema’s ranks are bolstered by a brigade of volunteers who are as much its lifeblood as those on payroll. The longest serving volunteer has been there 12 years, longer than any of the staff, and the crew is as delightfully eclectic as you’d hope. “All our volunteers, they kind of present as normal people. And then suddenly will just tell you, ‘Oh, yeah, I speak seven languages.’ Or, ‘I’m a professional pianist’”. There is a waiting list to volunteer; enthusiasm is not in short supply. Beyond this, it’s evident that the UPP could not exist without an (inter)national network of programmers, projectionists and distributors, passing back and forth knowledge, equipment and of course, spools of film.

 

 

Great people come together to create a great space, and there’s a deliberate emphasis on sharing it. The UPP has hosted events for transcendental meditation groups (the burning-sage-in-the-lobby kind) and partner with a local college to teach students how to become events programmers (a wistful Finnie: “I tried really hard to get them a motorbike”). Accessibility is an explicit priority. Executive Director Micaela Tuckwell tells me that the UPP “exists for the benefit of East Oxford.” The cinema is community-owned—one of the only ones in the country—and it’s clear all those at the UPP see this as a responsibility, something to live up to.

 

This comes up again when I ask about programming. How to balance showing films that they think people would want to see, versus films they think they should see? The answer: it’s a uniquely collaborative process, with a committee of staff and volunteers weighing in on a shortlist selected by head programmer Tom. On some level, they want to push people; Tuckwell says “we often ask our audience to trust us”, but at the same time Finnie states “our core audience… is very present all the time”. This core audience is spoken of with familiarity and fondness. Tuckwell knows which seats belong to which regulars, and can recount people’s go-to orders (one being “an old fashioned and pickles”…).

 

I’m told the UPP “has roots”. I begin to see what they mean. Mid-chat, Finnie pauses, points out a volunteer to me across the road. She mentions once bumping into a regular, randomly, on a train and chatting for an hour. She mentions being able to put together bigger, better, and cheaper events because everything she needed was just sourced from people:“You can do so much more than you think you can.”

 

Of course, uniting all who flock to the UPP is a love of film (Finnie’s favourites: Rocky Horror and The Wicker Man—NOT the Nicolas Cage remake. Tuckwell reckons people should give Flux Gourmet more of a chance—“beautiful and daft in equal measure”). This extends further, beyond love for the medium of film and to the cinema itself as a place of reverence; we talk of hushed walks home after the credits roll where, just sometimes, “it feels like something’s changed”. On New Year’s Day, the Picture Palace always shows a long film—three hours plus—with an intermission. The idea is to nurse hangovers and settle into the New Year, together.

 

That evening, I cycle back to the Picture Palace. The seats are full, and people belly laugh. The film is Grand Theft Hamlet. It is strange and beautiful; and, I find out after, this is one of the few cinema screenings across the country. It’s definitely one of the only ones with £5 tickets. The film ends, the credits roll; we spill out onto the streets outside, and, making like the Cranberries, linger. Eventually, picking my way home, Finnie’s words stay with me. “It’s just magic to have stumbled into something that’s so good.”∎

 

Words by Sienna Wadhwani. Images courtesy of Motacilla CC BY-SA via Wikimedia Commons and The Ultimate Picture Palace.