My earliest memories of cinema-going consist mainly of seeing bright fragments of Mickey Mouse cartoons on the big screen, most probably in one of the two big cinemas in Harrow town centre, near to where I grew up.

I had a traumatic experience at the Granada on Station Road when my dad took me to see Watership Down in early 1979. “Do you want to see Mickey Mouse or the rabbits?” “Rabbits!” came the inevitable reply.

Sadly no research had been done on the suitability of a six-year-old seeing said animation, and as the traumatic images took hold, I commenced to howl, was swiftly removed from the cinema and not a little angrily returned home with the sound of raised voices in the air as I whimpered alone in the bathroom about the poor bunnies…

On a happier note, around the same time, I recall seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with my mum at the EMI/Embassy in Chesham, which opened in 1937 but was sadly demolished in 1983. I still glance at where it once stood whenever I pass through the town.

The other Harrow cinema I frequented as a child was the ABC/Cannon, opened in 1936 as The Dominion, closing a few years ago as the Safari, its steel-clad façade masking a glorious F.E. Bromige art deco design, now restored. I don’t know the first, but I know that the last film I saw there was Overboard with Goldie Hawn in 1987.

That Harrow Granada was opened in 1937 by Jessie Matthews, a huge British star at the time. As a small child I met Jessie several times when my mum and I encountered her in our local laundrette in Hatch End.

I have a hazy memory of talking to this kindly old silver-haired lady and my equally kind mum giving Miss Matthews a welcome lift home with her washing. Jessie died not long after this time, in 1981, and my first ever visit to the Cinema Museum in April 2012 was for a Cinema Theatre Association 1930s Film Night event, giving me the chance to experience Jessie in her prime on the big screen in Evergreen (1934), a British art deco delight. The circle closes perfectly for me on this story as the giant red Granada sign from that Harrow cinema now hangs on the wall in the upstairs corridor leading to the main screening room at the Museum, an artefact which made me feel right at home there from the start.

At the Cinema Museum in April 2019 I sourced and screened for the Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend So This Is Paris, Ernst Lubitsch’s sparkling silent sex comedy, made for Warner Bros in 1926.

The film was so rare at the time that no one in that packed room had ever seen it, other than me. Ernst’s daughter Nicola Lubitsch herself had only seen it for the first time the year prior at UCLA (today it is on YouTube).

I had previously seen it just once, running the BFI’s 35mm archive copy on the Steenbeck, underground and unaccompanied at BFI Stephen Street. It had intertitles in Czech and I had to read an English translation that I’d copied down in pencil at the BFI Reuben Library. Even without music, and under those conditions, I thought it was a knockout!

For our festival screening, Kevin Brownlow kindly loaned me his 16mm copy of the US print, but I still didn’t know for sure if the enjoyment I’d experienced by myself viewing this unknown film would communicate to a large crowd… I should never have doubted it!

After talking the film up so much in my introduction I waited anxiously near the stage before taking my seat, watching for audience reaction. Immediately the laughter just started to come in waves, and kept on coming…

Having the original American art intertitles of course enhanced the viewing greatly and with John Sweeney’s piano accompaniment it was truly glorious. The film’s final pay-off, the moral of the tale, brought the biggest laugh of all. The Lubitsch ‘touch’ was unforgettable and the joy palpable. It was the greatest delight imaginable to share in the joy of experiencing what had until then been ostensibly a lost picture.

I placed So This is Paris in my 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films top ten list. That occasion of seeing it at the Cinema Museum wasn’t just personally significant but also just a great collective experience.

This is the height of cruelty. Only one cinema? I just can’t kill all my darlings… For aesthetics alone, I’d pick the Phoenix, East Finchley and The Rex, Berkhamsted. But for pure celluloid dedication, passion and programming, it has to be The Cinema Museum and the Prince Charles Cinema.

It would have to be the Odeon/Ace Cinema in Rayners Lane. Another formative venue for me, this was my favourite cinema to go to as a kid and I was always trying to get one of my parents to drop everything and just take me there already!

With another extraordinary Metroland art deco exterior designed by F.E. Bromige, positioned proudly opposite the Piccadilly Line Tube station, the look of it is still breathtaking to me.

I particularly recall seeing The Muppet Movie (1979), Clash of the Titans (1981) and WarGames (1983), my favourite spot being ensconced in the front of the balcony. I loved the lofty and distinctive amber windows, bathing in the light thrown as one climbed the stairs, the dynamic moulded deco lines directing the eye to the screen, and the moody recess lighting.

The cinema closed in 1986 and the building is now owned and maintained well by the Zoroastrian Trust. I visited in September 2023 during Open House Weekend, and the combined emotion and frustration at being in that space once again after so long, but without being able to watch a film there was overwhelming!

The Teatro Verdi in Pordenone, Italy is not a cinema, but a modern opera house, and yet it becomes the silent film world’s main focus each year in October when it transmogrifies into the venue hosting the Giornate del Cinema Muto, the planet’s biggest silent film festival, featuring seven solid days (and nights) of screenings. Into this small Northern Italian town descend scores of international archivists, film restorers, academics, programmers, historians, musicians and enthusiasts, with the Teatro Verdi (and the popular Posta bar opposite) turning into our joyous hub for una buona visione!