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OUR STORY
Genesis
Cinema, located on Mile End Road in East London, has had many names and seen
many faces. With heritage dating back to 1848, there sure is a lot of history
in this building!
1848. 95 MILE END ROAD.
The
first building on the Genesis site opens. This is the Eagle Public House, which
had a large open space for Music Hall entertainments. It’s thought to have been
managed by Wilton Friend.
1868. LUSBY’S.
William Lusby buys
the site, with Friend staying on as manager, opening it as Lusby’s Music Hall
and Temple of Varieties. It’s a popular entertainment venue with many playbills
attributed to it. On Easter Monday in 1877, it re-opens as Lusby’s Summer and
Winter Palace. A grand space, fitting 5000 guests, it’s the first of its kind
to have an outdoor garden; five folding doors open up onto a promenade, perfect
for summertime.
1878. NEW OWNERS.
Lusby sells
the venue to Charles Spencer Crowder and George Adney Payne for £25,000
(today’s equivalent of £3m). They kept the name, extended the gardens and a
year later it was proclaimed to be the ‘Largest, Coolest and best Ventilated
Hall in London’!
1884. FIRE.
The venue burns down in January. Crowder and
Payne hire Frank Matcham, the same architect who would subsequently design the
London Hippodrome, the Hackney Empire, the Palladium and the Victoria Palace,
to draft their theatre. It was unique because it was one of the first theatre
spaces to be built under the new Building Act (put in place because of the
number of theatres destroyed by fire) and for its emphasis on ventilation.
1885. PARAGON.
In May, the Paragon Theatre of Varieties opens! It is praised for its
achievements in audience comfort and for being one of the very finest places of
amusement. It plays host to stars of the era like Charlie Chaplin, Little Tich,
Gertie Gitana and Stan Laurel.
1912. CINEMA.
As the years pass and the venue changes hands (and names) many
times, the theatre begins showing cinema and reduced its variety acts. In 1938
the owners, ABC, demolished the venue and rebuilt. It had a small stage and two
dressing rooms just in case of a performance, but film filled the majority of
its programme: The Empire cinema was open.
1963. ROYAL PREMIERE.
Theatre director Joan Littlewood had a Royal Premiere of her debut film
SPARROWS CAN'T SING at ABC Mile End. It starred East End fave Barbara Windsor. This
first ever East End premiere was in aid of the Docklands Settlements, of which Princess
Margaret was president. Princess Margaret didn’t attend, reportedly due to flu,
but rumours suggest that it was instead because of the assumed danger of the notorious
gangsters The Kray Twins’ attendance. Her husband Lord Snowdon went as her
replacement. As for the after party, well, Windsor remembers ‘Stanley Baker and
Roger Moore stayed for dinner (pie and mash). Then we had a drink at the Krays’
club, the Kentucky, across the road from the cinema. We all ended up at
Esmeralda’s, Ronnie and Reggie’s West End club. It was great.’
After re-construction, re-cladding and re-naming, the cinema closed in 1988. It stood empty for a decade, left to be vandalised. That is, until local electrician and film lover, Tyrone Walker-Hebborn saw the cinema and fell in love - despite the hole in the roof in Screen 1. Conveniently, he was working at his family roofing business so if anything it added to the charm! It turns out his parents had courted at the cinema in the 60s, so it was meant to be.
1999. GENESIS CINEMA.
‘What
exactly is Genesis? Well, put simply, Genesis is life from lifelessness.’ In case you don’t know it, that’s a quote from Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan. Why? Well simply, Tyrone is a massive Trekkie! The cinema opens with great fanfare, including special guest Barbara
Windsor, who was last at the cinema for the Royal Premiere of her film Sparrows
Can't Sing.
2000. THE EAST END
FILM FESTIVAL.
After being presented with a host of short films and nowhere to watch
them, Tyrone took this as an opportunity to start a short film night at
Genesis. Together with the support of Sarah Wren from Tower Hamlets Film Office
and John Tobin from the Raindance Film Festival, the Genesis short film night
morphed into the East London Film Festival, with Tyrone, Wren and Tobin as its
founders. The Festival found its feet at Genesis, eventually becoming one of
the biggest film festivals in the UK and the naughty alternative to the London
Film Festival. In 2020 it closed its operations, after 20 years of celebrating
bold cinematic voices.
2011. THE STUDIO EXPERIENCE.
Wanting to create a more luxurious Genesis experience, Tyrone and his
dad ripped out the 100 seats at the back of the building and replaced them with
two 40-seat screens. Studios 4 and 5 allowed for a more intimate cinema
experience and pathed the way for the Genesis makeover in 2012. This included
bringing Paragon back through our upstairs bar, available to cinema-goers and
non-cinema-goers alike, and opening up the kitchen, serving fresh pizzas and
Pieminister pie and mash, like the Royal Premiere feast!
2012. POETRY SLAM.
Picture
this. One nippy winter’s night, and looking to get in from the chill, Tyrone wandered
into a dodgy pub in Hackney and plonked himself down in a somehow colder,
smelly back room wondering what he was doing there. Next thing he knows, a man
walks on stage, performs a headstand, announced he was a yoga poet and recites
a poem upside-down. The performance inspired the Poetry Slams that Genesis has
now hosted for 10 years. The Genesis Poetry Slam is the only free 3-round
poetry slam in London. In its history, its hosted Hammer & Tongue, one of
the giants in the Slam world, which now has performances at the Royal Albert
Hall.
2019. FRAGMENTS
FESTIVAL.
In the wake of the #MeToo movement and a recent industry-awareness of
the lack of women and non-binary people in film, Genesis launches Fragments
Festival. The festival is a celebration of diversity. We hosted the UK preview
for The Woman King in 2022, with director Gina Prince-Bythewood introducing,
and celebrated women in music in 2019 with a Bikini Kill pre-party. Now on its
third year, we are looking for more ways to push ourselves into the future of female and non-binary led filmmaking.
2020. LOCKDOWN.
COVID-19
required cinemas to shut for the first time since WWII. With the venue shut,
and once it was safe to work in bubbles, the Genesis team refurbished Screen 1
with new seating, extended the Kiosk and built the Yard, an outside eating and
drinking area (the modern equivalent of the original 19th Century
promenade). It opened in accordance with government guidelines, giving Tower
Hamlets residents a space to safely socialise and ease into the new normal.
2022 - NOW. A NEW
NORMAL.
Through the hard work of our super staff, and continual support from our
local community, Genesis Cinema has emerged from the other side of the Pandemic
with renewed confidence. We welcomed the first Hong Kong Film Festival in 2022;
hosted the 30th Anniversary of Raindance in 2023; and have been home
to many other premieres, festivals and events, highlighting just how vital our
cinema and venue space is to the East End. We’re looking forward to the future
of film, and what our historic and exciting venue will host next.
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