Scala!!! review — affectionate portrait of London’s famous movie pit
★★★☆☆
Douglas Hart, a founder member of alternative rockers the Jesus and Mary Chain, is one of the many engaging and articulate interviewees in this affectionate documentary about the relatively brief life (1978-93) of London’s famous independent cinema the Scala.
The ramshackle picture palace, now a music venue, was, Hart says, “a place where outsiders and freaks belonged, and you felt welcome’’. This is an idea that the film, directed with verve by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, is keen to underscore. And so, a plethora of former patrons, programmers and house staff, as well as professional enthusiasts and contemporary film-makers (Ben Wheatley, Mary Harron, John Waters), gleefully describe their experiences of a “subterranean” social world in the bowels of King’s Cross.
There, post-punks, misfits,
