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London's stages, concert rooms and cinemas: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the repertory and arthouse cinemas, the clubs proper, and the rooms above pubs where things start. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.
What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance
Films have been shown at this address since 1909, and the room you sit in is the Art Deco one of 1937.
CinemasLateWorth it for the building
Clara Ludski turned her auctioneer's shop into one of London's first cinemas in 1909 and called it the Kingsland Palace of Animated Pictures; six years later she had George Coles build her a proper one, the Kingsland Empire, with a domed tower, a tea room on two levels and Corinthian columns round the auditorium. F.E. Bromige stripped that out in 1937 and rebuilt the interior in Art Deco, and although bombing simplified the front, the 1937 cinema is substantially what is there now. It has been historically protected since 1997.
What it showed changed with the neighbourhood: cartoons through the 1950s, one of London's first arthouse programmes in 1960, adult films as the Tatler Cinema Club from 1970, then kung fu, Bollywood and Elvis revivals, before it became a community-run cinema in 1976 and a charity three years later. In the 1980s it was where the Black Audio Film Collective worked and where Hackney's campaigns met. Fifty years of that are being marked through 2026. Two screens now, with a queer strand called Pink Palace, classic matinees, screenings for carers with babies, a Saturday morning club for children, and late nights that start at 23:30.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.