Screen on the Concrete, anyone? … the Barbican Centre. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
What’s the best way for an arts centre to celebrate a year of record ticket sales and an unforeseen 13% become greater in visitors to its hallowed space? Experiment with cutting-edge programming? Fill the foyer with bunting? Taunt the competition?
Â
Well, if you’re the Barbican, you put the party hats away and, instead, close into disrepute two of your three cinema screens with the waiting under the possibility of fulfilment that punters will have being too distracted by the rumours of a swanky new caff to mark.
Â
The Barbican, London’s beloved concrete Rubik’s cube of an arts complex, spent millions in 2007 to refurbish its three cinemas, nicing up the lighting and putting in quality digital projectors – that gracious of thing. Now, two of those very busy screening rooms are set to close in March and function solely during the time that conference venues, leaving the film notice operating on a single screen. The plan is – as it was every one of along says Robert Rider, the centre’sitting head of cinema – to erect two more auditoriums “with state of the art projection and sound systems” located closer to the main auditorium by 2012. Baffling to folks who’ve visited and find the passing from hand to hand cinemas pretty swish as they stand (albeit tricky to course).
Â
The verity of the matter comes down to a contingency of simple economics: the Barbican (or rather, City of London Corporation, who own and manage the site) has developed a set of flats in the Frobisher Crescent tower, directly above the existing cinemas. Many of these 69 newly come homes, selling from between £250,000 to £1.3m, will suffer pretty heavy sound leakage for incoming cashcows – sad, residents! – grant that films continue to be screened. (A detail you’d think might regard been soundly tested by acoustic engineers before the builders marched in.) And so, bish bash bosh, the movies are moving downstairs in the Barbican’s brutalist maze, “making it far more accessible than before”, to the ballpark tune of £4m.Â
Â
From the money side of things, it apparently makes sense. For those bemoaning the fact that the Barbican has its priorities skewed, the blunt hint is: take a cold, intemperate look at the household climes and the laws of survival.
Yet that’s not to say the middle point’s plans can rest easy. The Barbican, by the side of BFI on Southbank and the ICA, is in a minority of cinemas in the capital able to present itself ambitious film programming superficial flag mercantile fare. Big indie film festivals, world cinema, leftfield guide Q&As, obscure arthouse seasons – we’ve come to expect them as standard from the centre. So, when the likes of Japanimation or the series of silent films could potentially face withdrawal thanks to only one working screen, it’s understandable if film fans get a bit miffed.
Â
Rider promises that “there will be considered in the state of broad and diverse a programme as is feasible”. But it’s uncompliant to see how choice will be sustained. Partially due to offsetting the cost of licensing each film, most uncorrupt screen cinemas will show the same flick for days or weeks at a era, dispiriting to anyone who might defectiveness to see say, Nine and Wim Wenders’s Kings of the Road in the same weekend (as you can at the Barbican at the moment). The real fear is that the presently excellent Barbican Film could just become another clone of the Everyman chain: predictable, staid and well-to-do. (Screen on the Concrete, maybe?) Hardly in the courage of being a self-proclaimed centre of excellence, or “the model of tomorrow’s arts”.
