A grindhouse cinema is born in South London | Little White Lies

A grind­house cin­e­ma is born in South London

09 Jul 2024

Large orange "The Novels" text on stage, a speaker at a podium, audience seated in front of stage
Large orange "The Novels" text on stage, a speaker at a podium, audience seated in front of stage
Born first as a pro­gramme at The Cin­e­ma Muse­um, The Nick­el is now mov­ing into a per­ma­nent space, offer­ing deep cuts and obscu­ri­ties to a cine-curi­ous audience.

South Lon­don has always been alive with arts and cul­ture from all cor­ners of the world, with every square mile boast­ing a dif­fer­ent world of cre­ativ­i­ty that every­one is wel­come to step into. Tucked with­in this patch­work is The Nick­el, an upcom­ing reper­to­ry cin­e­ma and the area’s lat­est for­ay into his­tor­i­cal redis­cov­ery – but the for­got­ten his­to­ry here isn’t so much dis­tant as it is unconventional…

Start­ed by film­mak­er Dominic Hicks as a series of pop-up screen­ings at The Cin­e­ma Muse­um before mov­ing to its own venue in Cam­ber­well, The Nick­el reg­u­lar­ly runs the gamut from the grind­house to the art­house on a mix­ture of cel­lu­loid for­mats as well as VHS and dig­i­tal. The Nick­el is an attempt to reclaim the screen for peo­ple who love cin­e­ma,” Hicks explains. We want to make an alter­na­tive, rad­i­cal space that brings togeth­er an adven­tur­ous audi­ence for a wide array of adult-ori­ent­ed pro­gram­ming, from clas­sics to cult trash to unde­fin­able head­fuck odd­i­ties.” With this man­i­festo, their pro­gramme might include silent pre-code shock­er The Unknown, curi­ous­ly pro­found Amer­i­can sex­ploita­tion Flesh­pot on 42nd Street, Ital­ian Poliziotteschi Milano Cal­i­bro 9, hyper­ki­net­ic Japan­ese jidaige­ki Shogun Assas­sin, scuzzy shot-on-video queer flick Blonde Death, blood-soaked satan­ic pan­ic B‑movie I Drink Your Blood and Věra Chytilová’s kalei­do­scop­ic Daisies – all in the same week.

Tech com­pa­nies would pre­fer us to sit at home watch­ing films on our lap­tops, while major stu­dios release increas­ing­ly bloat­ed fran­chise films to lure peo­ple back to the mul­ti­plex,” Hicks says. To this end, he shares a sen­ti­ment from Nate Wil­son, direc­tor of The All Gold­en: They say that cin­e­ma is equal parts art and busi­ness. Well, if the busi­ness is dying, then that just leaves the art.”

Aside from being a 60-seater screen,” Hicks accords, pre­serv­ing the art that has been left behind is real­ly what sets The Nick­el aside from the aver­age mul­ti­plex.” But it seems that describ­ing The Nick­el in these terms is doing it a dis­ser­vice; with screen­ing prac­tices firm­ly in place and the fringe films of a bygone era on their radar, how has an ini­tia­tive like The Nick­el raised almost £14,000 and acquired a per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy in South Lon­don? What has brought this niche area of movie fan­dom into the spot­light, or per­haps more impor­tant­ly, why has it hap­pened now?

Well, as a reper­to­ry’ cin­e­ma, The Nick­el will focus on the tra­di­tion­al, cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence of both clas­sic and cult movies: The Nick­el will offer up reg­u­lar themed nights, pro­vid­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty for film lovers with a par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic niche,” says Hicks. The point of this, par­tic­u­lar­ly on cel­lu­loid or tape, is to bring these films out of the ethe­re­al state of mem­o­ry and ground them in an encounter with cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry that stream­ing can­not pro­vide. Instead of atom­is­ing audi­ences on stream­ing plat­forms at home, The Nick­el will bring peo­ple togeth­er to share their obses­sions and be proud of their pas­sion – a place for the art­house crowd to rub shoul­ders with gore­hounds and kung fu freaks.”

As tan­gi­ble as the film reels them­selves, The Nick­el seeks to cre­ate a space to exchange love for sub­ter­ranean cin­e­ma that extends out of the screen and bounces between audi­ence mem­bers. At their time of release,” Hicks explains, exploita­tion films – and lat­er video nas­ties – caused offence amongst reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives, who attacked them on moral grounds (despite like­ly nev­er ven­tur­ing into the the­atres they played). The inner-city audi­ences at Grind­house cin­e­mas, how­ev­er – who were per­haps more like­ly to be on the fringes of soci­ety – loved them. Mod­ern audi­ences might take issue with the polit­i­cal­ly tact­less excess of these films, but their libid­i­nal ener­gy and aes­thet­ic inno­va­tion, unshack­led by con­ven­tion and unchecked by the dic­tates of good taste’, often make usu­al Hol­ly­wood fare seem pale and ster­ile by comparison.”

Audience seated in an auditorium with a stage and the word "CINEMA" displayed.

By cre­at­ing a safe space for audi­ences to encounter these relics, The Nick­el con­tex­tu­alis­es a cel­e­bra­tion of under­min­ing cen­sor­ship with­in the his­to­ry of some of the films’ now out­dat­ed ideas. That’s real­ly the point of a reper­to­ry screen; to allow audi­ences to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly engage with cin­e­ma through both the lens of the past and the lens of today.”

But there’s anoth­er ben­e­fit of a space like The Nick­el. As far back as the the­atres of 42nd Street, grind­house movie the­atres have pro­vid­ed a space for film­mak­ers who were oth­er­wise neglect­ed by con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive modes and indus­try prac­tices, cre­at­ing an alter­na­tive par­al­lel cin­e­ma for those who have been mar­gin­alised by Hollywood.

Hicks cites blax­ploita­tion films as an exam­ple. These films brought with them pow­er­ful and cathar­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of black­ness that were free to be far more overt than black roles offered by main­stream stu­dio prod­uct […] Stu­dio films that dealt with race (like Guess Who’s Com­ing to Din­ner) were well-inten­tioned polemics for a large­ly white, mid­dle-class audi­ence (and for the Acad­e­my), while exploita­tion films like Truck Turn­er and Coffy played to packed the­atres in black neigh­bour­hoods for months.” So the pre­serv­ing nature of a reper­to­ry cin­e­ma has found anoth­er pur­pose: in the same way that these films are nar­ra­tive­ly sub­ver­sive, revis­it­ing films about social groups who weren’t allowed a voice in their time cel­e­brates them in ret­ro­spect, some­thing that soci­ety final­ly seems ready for.

Oliv­er Sims’ award-win­ning music video for his song Hideous is a prime exam­ple of a queer artist using the expres­siv­i­ty of blood-splat­ter and hyper-con­cept to make the case for queer rep­re­sen­ta­tion as dif­fer­ent, but a dif­fer­ent that exists and that we have to get used to. This unre­strict­ed oth­er­ness is a cen­tral part of the lega­cy of the grind­house and alter­na­tive, reper­to­ry cin­e­ma,” Hicks explains, And some­thing we want to sus­tain at The Nick­el, by invit­ing pro­gram­mers from all iden­ti­ties and back­grounds to feel sup­port­ed in tak­ing risks with their selections.”

The Nickel’s trail­blaz­ing cam­paign is just more evi­dence that the audi­ences are out there and ready to be shocked and dis­mayed, be it through love of the gory and the crazed, or mere­ly a fas­ci­na­tion with all things dif­fer­ent. With plans to start day­time work­shops on writ­ing, act­ing and shoot­ing, as well as a zine and a pod­cast to accom­pa­ny pro­gram­ming, I wasn’t sur­prised when Hicks assured me that The Nick­el was not just a grind­house – it is becom­ing a venue for much more than crazy car chas­es and blood-splat­tered slash­ers. Though you should enter with cau­tion, this is cer­tain­ly one to look out for.

Fol­low The Nick­el on Insta­gram and X.

You might like