{"id":11848,"date":"2023-03-24T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T10:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/?p=11848"},"modified":"2024-09-17T08:33:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T07:33:09","slug":"a-new-world-opened-cmdas-glasgow-homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/2023\/03\/24\/a-new-world-opened-cmdas-glasgow-homecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"“A New World Opened”: CMDA’s Glasgow Homecoming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Neely and Annette Kuhn<\/p>\n

While work on Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive continues, the conclusion of the project\u2019s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded period was marked by a programme of events held in Glasgow, the city where the project began life thirty years ago as Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain (CCINTB)<\/a>. In the early 1990s Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) hosted a season of popular 1930s films, and a number of Glasgow<\/a>\u2019s surviving 1930s cinemagoers subsequently gave interviews about their youthful cinemagoing.<\/p>\n

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Popular Cinema in the 1930s, GFT Autumn 1992 [CC-19-000GF001]<\/p><\/div>Celebrations were launched at the GFT on Friday 7 October 2022 with \u2018An Afternoon at the Cosmo in the 1930s\u2019, featuring a special matinee screening of Un Carnet de Bal <\/em>(1937, dir. Julien Duvivier).\u00a0 Based on the play \u2018Le P\u00e9cheur d\u2019ombres\u2019 by Jean Sarment, Un <\/em>Carnet de Bal <\/em>is the story of a recently widowed socialite who finds her first dance card, from twenty years earlier. Seeking to satisfy her romantic curiosity, she sets out to track down her dance partners and find out what has become of them. Described by its director as \u201ca love story whose main character is the past\u201d, Un Carnet de Bal<\/em> proved a popular attraction for Glasgow\u2019s filmgoers when the GFT (then known as the Cosmo) first opened its doors in May 1939.<\/p>\n

Duvivier\u2019s film was mentioned, unprompted, by two of CCINTB\u2019s Glasgow interviewees, both of whom recall seeing it at the Cosmo–one of them on her wedding day:<\/p>\n

\u201cFrench films were the great things\u00a0when the Cosmo opened, and they were burgeoning in London at\u00a0that time. There was a cinema, the Academy Cinema, which George Singleton who\u00a0opened the Cosmo, he really learnt from. I think he got the same person to buy\u00a0his films that bought films for the Academy. And things you read about, you\u00a0know, suddenly they were available in Glasgow for the, for the first time. The\u00a0opening film was a Julien Duvivier film,\u00a0Un Carnet de Bal<\/em>, it was an absolute,\u00a0oh, a new world opened, you know, seeing that sort of thing.\u201d Tony Paterson, 29 November 1994 [TP-92-013AT001]<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, I was at the opening of what was the Cosmo, it’s the Glasgow Film\u00a0Theatre now. The, the owner of the Cosmo, one of his sons, was our best\u00a0man, Jimmy Singleton. Erm, and when I got married and Jimmy was my husband’s\u00a0best man, we got married very quickly, because the war started. \u2026 So the war was declared on the 3rd\u00a0of September, and we got married on the 23rd. And we had a, just a very quiet\u00a0wedding, with families, and from there we went to the Cosmo and we saw Un Carnet\u00a0de Bal<\/em>, eh, for the adults to go to that after the service, after we had a meal.\u00a0We got married about lunchtime, had lunch and then they took the, all the\u00a0company to the cinema, to the Cosmo and saw Un Carnet\u00a0de Bal<\/em>. Including the\u00a0minister! It was one of these cinemas, I don’t know if you know it, one\u00a0of these films, where they were all going in and out each other’s bedrooms. My\u00a0mum saying to the minister, \u201cI don’t think you knew that this\u00a0sort of thing went on, did you?\u201d So after that the older folk all just\u00a0went away and the younger ones went to the Plaza ballroom.\u201d Helen Smeaton, Glasgow, 23 January 1995 [HS-92-036AT001]<\/p>\n

The GFT screening of Un Carnet de Bal <\/em>was accompanied by a short film by CMDA artist-in-residence, Glasgow-based filmmaker Marissa Keating, about Thomas McGoran<\/a>, one of the project\u2019s original participants. Now in his nineties, Mr McGoran worked as a projectionist in Glasgow during the 1940s and was interviewed for CCINTB in November 1994 [TM-92-009AT001] and February 1995 [TM-92-009AT002]. After the screening a discussion took place between Mr McGoran and ourselves, with contributions from the audience.<\/p>\n

\u2018An Afternoon at the Cosmo\u2019 was followed by a reception at Glasgow School of Art\u2019s Reid Gallery. \u2018Glasgow, Cinema City\u2019, an exhibition running at the Gallery between 1st and 11th October, was developed in collaboration with CMDA and showcased several of the project\u2019s creative outputs: a suite of drawings of Glasgow cinemas by Mr McGoran commissioned \u00a0for a new audio walking tour<\/a> created by sound artist Suzy Angus; a selection of his architectural drawings of other Glasgow landmarks; Seeing in the Dark<\/a>, <\/em>a digital installation from theatre company imitating the dog; and Marissa Keating\u2019s film, which includes scenes capturing Mr McGoran working on his Glasgow cinema drawings.<\/p>\n

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Thomas McGoran’s drawing of the Paramount Cinema, Glasgow [TM-92-009-OA031]<\/p><\/div>When the exhibition ended Mr McGoran\u2019s cinema drawings were moved to the Advanced Research Centre at the University of Glasgow where they remained on show until mid-December. The exhibitions attracted many visitors and a good deal of press coverage, including pieces in the Glasgow Evening Times<\/a> and The Scotsman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thomas McGoran\u2019s artworks continue to draw admirers.\u00a0 Following a recent exhibition of his paintings at the Forge Shopping Centre in Glasgow\u2019s East End, he was featured earlier this\u00a0 month on BBC News at Six<\/a>; and \u2018Going to the Pictures\u2019, one of his cinema paintings, was selected to appear on rare bottles of Auchentoshan whisky<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cGlasgow was a movie-mad city\u201d, Mr McGoran commented. \u201cThere were cinemas everywhere, queued out, every day and every night of the week.\u201d\u00a0 Echoing sentiments expressed by many other CCINTB participants, he added, \u201cGoing to the cinema was an escapist thing for us, you know? You used to go there, and you would be carted away to another world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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‘Saturday Night at the Movies’ by Thomas McGoran [TM-92-009-OA001]<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The interviews referred to can be accessed as both audio and transcript via the CMDA website. <\/a>\u00a0Along with the other archival assets mentioned, these can also be consulted in physical form in the Cinema Memory Archive at ¿ì²¥ÊÓƵ, by appointment with Special Collections<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If you wish to cite and\/or re-use any of these materials, please consult\u00a0 the CMDA website<\/a> for information on\u00a0copyright<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0using the materials<\/a> from the collection and for a citation referencing guide<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Neely and Annette Kuhn While work on Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive continues, the conclusion of the project\u2019s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded period was marked by a programme of events held in Glasgow, the city where the project began life thirty years ago as Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain (CCINTB). In the … Continue reading “A New World Opened”: CMDA’s Glasgow Homecoming<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-events","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11848"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12237,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11848\/revisions\/12237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fass\/projects\/cmda\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}