White Wall Cinema has been an ongoing pop-up cinema since 2015 and has undergone significant changes in its activity. Whereas before, it would be two to three screenings a year at venues ranging from clothing stores to church halls, it is now celebrating its 10th anniversary, having increased its frequency of screenings to one or two a week, having been at their permanent home in Wagner Hall since 2019, and currently enjoying their busiest year to date.
Henry Ray is one of the founders of White Wall Cinema and believes what makes White Wall special to him and those who attend screenings is that it’s all personal. To him, “It’s not done along the lines of business or to impress anybody, we just do it because we really love doing it and we have a passion for cinema. When people discover something that they previously thought wasn’t exciting to them, but someone has opened their door for them, they’ll want to come back and find more of that.”
It could also be said that White wall’s success has inspired other people to set up pop-up cinemas across Brighton. Henry himself has been told by people that “You’ve been the inspiration”, and he is happy that more has happened because of his work with White Wall, although he jokes that “If you’ve been doing it for 10 years, you’d hope that would be the case.”
The venue choice of Wagner Hall, which has seating ranging from 112 to 130, has been something that has benefited both White Wall and the people that own Wagner Hall. Henry said that, having used it once for an event, ‘We’re now fully involved with the place, which means a closer relationship, which is always good because venues are very difficult for pop-up cinemas.’
When it comes to the programming at White Wall, the screenings will range from as far back as the 1930s to something released relatively recently. As described on their website, White Wall’s screenings aim to “cover all types of film, from all genres and eras with a focus on those films that are a little off the beaten path, that you generally won’t find screened at your local multiplex.”. Henry expands on this philosophy, saying, “When we see something we liked and enjoyed, we think other people will enjoy it, and it isn’t primarily an audience thing, rather than ‘Will we get lots of people to it’, it’s ‘Will someone come to it and think it was great’. The sky’s the limit, how we decide is totally on instinct”.
The main worry with any cinema, especially a pop-up cinema, is the finances of the whole operation. Whilst Henry knows this is the biggest challenge for White Wall Cinema, he also isn’t fazed by the difficulty it may provide. He said, ‘You’ll take a hit on things financially, but as long as we’re sensible, and don’t be too ambitious as we go along, then you don’t have to worry too much. You’re very unlikely to ever make any money, but that’s not the point. If we were in it for money, we’d be doing something else entirely.’
The COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020 was detrimental to all aspects of life, but for a pop-up cinema like White Wall, it provided a unique scenario compared to other cinemas in the area. Henry recalls, ‘When things opened up in a socially distanced way, we could be swift and nimble and just do something because we’re not a major corporation. We started doing weekly or sometimes nightly screenings of different things in a socially distanced way. That was one of the things that really connected us to where we are now because we were doing it so consistently all through these periods when the rules allowed it. Because it was so unpredictable, because we were small and were just people, we could be “Oh, they’re opening again in 10 days, let’s do it.”
When it comes to the future, Henry is undeniably hopeful. With this year being the busiest for White Wall Cinema, Henry and his team are taking it as a year to be the best version of themselves, alongside planning something in the second half of the year that can be deemed as a birthday to celebrate 10 years since opening. Ultimately, Henry wishes to make White Wall Cinema and the venue of Wagner Hall ‘less of a pop-up, more of a hub for cinema. Part of the mission of the cinema was to create the thing that I thought should be here, and since it wasn’t here, so let’s just make it ourselves. We’ll do what feels right, but people seem to want more of it, so we’re going to grow organically with that and see how far they can take it.
Ultimately, Henry can be happy with where White Wall is currently at, and how it has transformed into a more frequent and vibrant place for people to watch films they might not have thought about watching in the first place. He feels grateful to those who keep attending screenings and believes the connection shared with them has become stronger since the pandemic. He said, “Since that time, people come up to me after screenings and say ‘You’ve saved my life’ because that was absolutely what they needed at that time. For us, it’s made a real connection between us and the audience and helped us decide that we wanted to keep doing this in a more serious way.”
The Whistler 