Original subtitles

Hello, this is Jane Giles. I'm the co -director of Scala, and I'm here to talk

you through a collection of 15 of the Scala monthly programmes from 1978

to 1993.

We've chosen one a year. I've chosen one a year.

The programmes were collated to be republished in a book by Fab Press in

on which the Scala documentary is based, partly based.

The early programmes were the property of a collector named Richard Dacre and

the later programmes came from the Scala Kings Cross cinema office collection.

First of all, this is October 1978.

It's an early edition.

The first Scala programme was July 1978 and during 78 -79 the

programme format changed.

almost every month.

This is a really good example of a first -run programme.

As you can see, the Cinemara's opening word is out, which is a groundbreaking

documentary made by the Mariposa Film Group, a collective who set out

to express the voices of lesbian and gay men in their own authentic...

as opposed to mediated through satire or drama or any other kind of

filter. So you can also see Holland County, USA, playing

Backroads, Love Letters, Extended Run. So that's what a Scala programme looked

like before it evolved into a repertory cinema.

June 1979 was the first time that the Scala programme achieved what was going

to... be close to its definitive format, a fold -out calendar poster

style which showcased a repertory program of different double or triple

every day and all night screenings on Saturday.

It's terrific. It was based on the New Art calendar in Los Angeles and the Roxy

calendar in San Francisco.

and it's pretty much a blueprint of what the Scala would continue to be for the

next 15 years.

January 1980 is when the Scala monthly programmes were still very big, much

bigger than what they would become and they were also printed double -sided so

you had two months

together. This had January and February 1980 which meant that there was a very

long lead time for the production of the monthly programme.

It had a programme far in advance which wasn't always really the best thing for

this gala.

January is interesting because it's the first of the what you might call the

best of the worst.

It was a sort of

theory of interest in so -called trash cinema.

You can see all sorts of things like, for example, there on the 10th of

you can see a double bill of Attack of the 50 -Foot Woman and The Wasp Woman.

You can see on the 12th, Santa Claus Conquers Martians, all sorts of other

By July 1981, the Scala had moved from Tottenham Street in the West End up

to King's Cross. And this was the first of the King's Cross programmes.

You can see the architectural drawing of the King's Cross cinema, which became

the Scala, on the front of the programme.

And yes, by now, the programme was pretty much in its final form

of size.

um design and i should have mentioned that all of the programs were designed

2d right from the beginning from the very first one for all the different

changes right to the end

This is the December 1982 edition of the Scala programme, and having just said

that all of them were designed by 2D, I must tell you this one is actually

designed by Neville Brodie.

The Scala was first running Chow Manhattan, as you can see.

the documentary about Edith Sedgwick.

And it did have a repertory programme in parts on the back, which included John

Walters films and more Andy Warhol films.

But this was one of the very rare occasions when the Scala programme took

completely different identity.

September 1983 is the September in the Pink programme.

It was a festival that was funded by Ken Livingstone's GLC, an arts festival

dedicated to lesbian and gay works, and the Scala provided the film

programme. So this is probably the first time that you can see such a

dedicatedly large part of the programme.

focusing on LGBTQ plus titles.

You can also see, for example, there on the 4th of September, Women Only Day.

That's quite unusual.

They did occur later on in Scarlet's history, actually right up until the

but not very often.

April 1984 is covered in pictures of Marlon Brando. He looks great.

You might think that it was a whole Marlon Brando season running throughout

April 1984, but in fact there wasn't. There was just a screening

of The Wild One on the 3rd of April.

It was to celebrate Marlon Brando's 60th birthday.

August 1985 is quite a strange looking scarlet.

It was unusual to just have a black programme printed on a coloured paper.

The main emphasis of this month is The Element of Crime, the first film by Lars

von Trier, which is showing for a week from the 10th of August. And it's double

billed with a range of films attempting to explain what kind of films

stylistically and thematically The Element of Crime is.

January 1986 has this delicious colour combination of pink fading up

into yellow and it feels like some kind of weird space -age tequila sunrise to

me. We borrowed the colour design for the...

quad poster for the UK of Scala which you can see on the front of this Blu

You can also see that the Scala's caption competition which launched

in December 1985 has named its first winner Andy Kirby from E1

with his caption for Kiss of the Spider Woman.

This programme from May 1987 heavily features the image of Andy Warhol to

a season of his films from 15th of May through

to 22nd of May, 23rd of May in fact. There's a substantial

season of quite hard to get prints.

Elsewhere on the programme you'll see a benefit for London youth CND.

July 1988. This programme is covered in fish, I think, for no particular reason.

It also features the second of the Shock Around the Clock.

You can see it down there on the 30th, all day and all night.

Horror film Shock Around the Clock would, of course, eventually evolve into

Frightfest.

August 1989 was, of course, 3D month at the Scala.

You can see an amazing season featuring Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein,

Friday the 13th, Part 3 in 3D.

And, of course, the creature from the Black Lagoon, and it came from outer

space. But also, this was the month that the Scala showed the Tingler and the

House on Haunted Hill.

September 1990, what a fantastic fluorescent leopard skin edition.

This was showcasing cult cinema of all different stripes, including, as you can

see there, Mondo Trasho, screening with polyester, devil's cleavage,

thundercrack, hairspray.

What a great programme.

July 1991 was the scholars... 10th anniversary in King's Cross. And to

celebrate, we had this lovely silver metallic programme with the bright pink.

And it showcased a lot of the scholars' greatest hits.

You can see, obviously, their Café Flesh and Thundercrack on Monday the 15th.

And that particular still from Thundercrack was used endlessly.

I think it was the only one that we ever had.

Maybe that and Marion Eaton with her head down the toilet.

December 1992,

Scala was really struggling for audiences, which could be hard to come

December, but particularly by this point, by 1992, with King's Cross in

recession, and it was a really difficult time.

So Helen DeWitt, who was programmer at the time, and Stephen Woolley came up

with the eight episodes of sex films.

Not really sex films, but sort of arty films that were...

quite explicit and this programme got the Scala into the bad books of the

newspaper who didn't like it at all.

April 1993 was the second to last of the Scala programmes to be printed

before the cinema closed as it at least ran out in June 1993.

And it was a fundraising edition of the programme that was covering off the loss

of the cost of the Clockwork Orange lawsuit, but also aiming to try and kind

create a fighting fund to enable cinema to find alternative premises.

And you can see that each day of the month has been sponsored by a like

-minded company or individual.

There's all sorts of names there. There are places that no longer exist, like

Compendium Bookshop, which was Camden's great alternative bookshop. Camden

Partway Cinema.

Similarly, the Face magazine does still exist, and of course, Sight and Sound

does as well.

Dennis Cockle, tattooist, who decorated many a member of staff of this gala. The

band, Gallant Drunk, headed up by James Johnson, who played live.

several times at the Scala, Penguin Books and of course Newt Records.

And there on the 3rd of May you can see that our friend Jonathan Ross sponsored

a triple bill of Russ Mayer in aid of the Save the Scala Fund.