The aim of the Going to the Pictures Project has been to help preserve a part of our local cinema heritage by collecting and recording memories from people who used and worked in the local picture houses from the 1930′s to the 1960′s.
The project has focused on 21 cinemas in the areas of Crosby, Waterloo, Seaforth, Litherland and Bootle which have played a part in our community and formed fond memories and helped shape and develop opinions and ideas on the world through the medium of cinema.
These memories have helped create this website, a film, a documentary and a Cinema Heritage Trail.
The memories we have recorded have also been placed within the North West Sound Archive and Sefton Records Office to be stored and kept for future generations.
We have also recorded and digitally scanned several pieces of local cinema memorabilia from collections of local cinema goers who have contributed to the project and our aims in helping to preserve a part of our local heritage which could have been lost.
Living in a modern, world with instant and on demand access to media makes it difficult for younger generations to percieve the social phenomonom and importance of Going to the Pictures.
For our parents, aunties, uncles, grandparents, and their families before, the cinema offered an escape from what was sometimes a harsh world, a warm and luxurious environment in which to socialise and be entertained and informed.
Cinemas not only showed films but also news programs in the form of Newsreels. These provided information about what was going on in the world, putting moving pictures to what was only read about in newspaers or heard on the radio before the days of television and the internet.
They gave a place within the local community to meet and socialise and offered variety in the choice and frequency of films.
There were many cinemas to choose from and Going to the Pictures was a weekly part of life which was an affordable luxury.
Cinemas were good value for money when times were austere providing a full nights entertainment or an escape for the children to a Saturday Cinema Show for a few pennies or an exchanged jam jar or two.
This website provides initial sources of information for further research into the subject. It has first hand accounts from people telling their experiences of the golden age of cinema.
Through the project we have been looking at several themes and asked questions about going to the pictures relating to these themes. The Themes are – Picture Palaces, Children’s Cinema Matinees, Gender in Cinema, Cinema and Society, and Memorabilia
Memories and background information can be found under each of the Theme Headings and through ‘tag’ words through the website.
The site is really easy to navigate so sit back and enjoy Going to the Pictures.