- by Martin Humphries
- 31 July 2026
The truly unique Cinema Museum in Kennington is currently crowdfunding to secure its long-term future. Here co-founder Martin Humphries recalls a lifetime of cinema-going from childhood flicks in a village hall to silent classics in Italy.
What’s your earliest memory of going to the cinema?
Watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (USA, 1937) in the local village hall in Portishead.
It was a 16mm print shown by a travelling cinema projectionist who took his show around small Somerset villages. I imagine he had a regular circuit. I think I was 10 years old so it would have been 1965 and I would have been accompanied by my mum. This would have been on a Saturday morning. He showed films for adults in the evening.
What’s your most memorable experience at the cinema?
Watching Abel Gance’s five-and-a-half hour Napoleon (France, 1927) during The 24th London Film Festival at The Empire Cinema Leicester Square on Sunday 30 November 1980. This was the first screening of the restoration by Kevin Bownlow and David Gill of Photoplay Productions with a magnificent score by Carl Davis. One of the many silent film screenings sponsored by Thames Television. It has a sensational final sequence when three images appear on the screen followed by a panoramic shot of Napoleon and his army. I have seen the film twice since – in 1984 at The Barbican and in 2000 at The Royal Festival Hall.
Abel Gance's Napoléon at the Paramount Theatre Oakland, 2012. (Photo by Pamela Gentile)
If you could only go to one current cinema for the rest of your life which one would it be?
Picturehouse Central on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. It has seven screens so offers you a wide choice of films. It can show films in 35mm and 70mm as well as DCP. There’s also a very comfortable member’s bar and the staff are enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The most recent memorable film was The Christophers. I’ve also enjoyed the recent Frankenstein and Urchin there.
Do you have a favourite cinema outside of the UK?
Teatro Verdi in Pordenone where the films for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto are shown.* I have been going to the Giornate since 1998. It is a week of screening various programs of silent films from 9am with a major feature film in the evening. It is impossible to watch everything so you have to work out which strands to follow. One memorable project that was spread over several years was showing the films of D W Griffith. Frank Borzage’s 7th Heaven (USA, 1927) was a joy.
Other screenings there I’ve enjoyed include Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (USA, 1927); What Price Glory (USA, 1926); Cut it Out (UK, 1925); When A Man Loves (USA, 1927); City Lights (USA 1931); Beau Brummel (USA, 1924); The Dawn of Technicolor film series.
*Cinema Museum regular Michelle Facey also chose this one. Read her Cinema Memories here.
The Cinema Museum needs to raise £500,000 to help purchase its historic building and permanently secure the venue for the future. Make your donation via Crowdfunder.
Further Exploration
- The Cinema Museum Info on tours & upcoming events
- Cinema Museum CrowdfunderDonate to secure the museum's future
About Martin & The Cinema Museum
Martin Humphries co-founded the Cinema Museum with Ronald Grant in 1984. In 1998 the museum moved into its current home, The Master’s House of the Old Lambeth Workhouse. This was where Charlie Chaplin was forced, through destitution, to enter several times in his youth.
The Cinema Museum is about the experience of going to the cinema in the 1930s to the 1960s. The public collection consists of a rich assortment of interior decor and design and a historic collection of many gauges of technical equipment. You can explore the collection via a guided tour or attending one of the wide range of events that take place week in, week out.
1991—
Piccadilly Circus
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