Sab Astley

When you hear the phrase ‘cultural film hub’, the Essex town of Romford won’t be the first place that springs to mind. And yet, nestled on the third floor of The Mercury, its shopping centre, you’ll find a new endeavour that’s lit a fuse under not just in its community, but across the UK. This cinema boasts members from as far and wide as the Hebrides and beyond the UK itself, many of whom will never even attend.  Membership to the Lumiere Romford, a not-for-profit, community-led cinema similar to London’s The Castle Cinema or Portland’s Clinton Street Theatre, costs £30 a year, but it offers a USP that marks it out from the average cinema membership. Alongside discounted tickets and concessions, from May 2026, when the Lumiere begins to make a profit, members will pocket a share as ‘Lumiere credits’. They’ll be redeemable at the cinema – a kind of collectivist approach to cinema going.  Photograph: HANNAH DAVIS 2024 The Lumiere, which opened in April, is the brainchild of 52-year-old former Mercury Shopping Centre manager and Romford Film Festival organiser Spencer Hawken, a cult movie devotee. The walls of this old multiplex in the shopping centre are now covered with old movie posters, red velvet barriers adding a touch of old Hollywood glamour to the lobby. There are seven screens and plans to turn an eighth into a ‘mini Phoenix Arts Club’, a nod to the off-Soho venue known for its cabaret and comedy nights. The eureka moment for Lumiere Romford came when Hawken discov

If you walk down Clerkenwell Road, a red building will catch your eye. It’s a bazaar of the bizarre, a shrine to the shocking.  Welcome to The Nickel, London’s newest – and cultiest – cinema. A DIY affair, it’s owned and operated by Dominic Hicks, a movie aficionado who has travelled the globe’s repertory cinema scene, from New York to LA, Barcelona to Japan. The Nickel Cinema began life in October 2023 as a pop-up in pubs like Camberwell’s The Bear, before expanding to The Cinema Museum, Jamboree in King’s Cross and All Is Joy in Dean Street. The events regularly sold out as The Nickel’s popularity grew. ‘The plan was always to build an actual space, so these pop-ups gave me a means to get more experience, which I definitely needed since I was pretty green in the realms of programming and projection,’ says Hicks. Hicks initially balanced his filmmaking day job with running The Nickel, before dropping everything to focus on the project. ‘You have to be a bit mad to try to pull off something like this, but I would have died trying.’  Photograph: Dominic HicksInside The Nickel’s screening room He launched a fundraiser with a target of £10,000, ending up on nearly £15,000 and added confidence that Londoners bought into his vision for a cult cinema. ‘It created pressure that if I had failed to deliver, I probably would have had to leave the country!’Happily, with some help from The Scala’s Jane Giles and other cinema veterans, and a crash course in cinema programming – Hicks w

Named after silent era moving picture venues, London’s newest cinema The Nickel has found a permanent home in Clerkenwell. The cinema will open in early summer with a 35-seater screen dedicated to the ‘grindhouse spirit’, which will encapsulate the bizarre, the sensational, subversive, psychotronic and rebellious, from the silent age all the way to the modern YouTube era. One night you could be watching El Topo and Eraserhead, the next a series of Adult Swim shorts with the director himself in for a Q&A.  Those attending a screening can grab a drink to debrief in the venue’s basement bar. The cinema will boast its own physical media emporium, where cinema lovers can pick up soundtracks, posters, books, and even movies to rent and buy in a Blockbuster-style throwback. The Nickel plans to slowly expand from film screenings to live performances and a zine, and it will offer the space for creative work and discussion groups, as well as filmmaking workshops on how to shoot on 16mm film.  The cinema is located on Clerkenwell Road and its exact opening date will be announced in the coming weeks.  Photograph: The Nickel The Nickel founder Dom Hicks has travelled the globe as a result of his love for global repertory cinemas, from London's Prince Charles Cinema and the ICA to the Cine Doré in Madrid and The New Beverley in Los Angeles.For him, The Nickel is a place to offer a film that you may never have heard of but where you end up walking out with a new all-time favourite. ‘It’s