From the foyer, Forest Cinema seems just like your standard out-of-town multiplex. Trailers promote the latest films showing across its nine screens, and the shelves behind the tills teem with warm cabinets of sweet and salty popcorn, packets of M&Ms and churning vats of luridly-coloured slushie drinks.
But we're not in a retail park on the outskirts of commutersville, we're in the centre of Walthamstow, east London, just a popcorn kernel's throw from the bustling market that's the beating heart of the local community.
With a history in motion pictures that stretches all the way back to the 19th century, the family running Forest Cinema are better placed than anyone with its stewardship.
The Jervis family took over the site following Empire Cinemas' collapse into administration in 2023. But while the trappings of a cinema chain might remain, the focus has shifted: Forest Cinema is part of the Jervis family's six-strong portfolio of cinemas around the country, all housed in historic buildings and all rescued from the cinematic scrapheap.
It's a diverse bunch, taking in art deco styling (The Royal Cinema in Sutton Coldfield), the Grade II-listed former headquarters of Chubb Locks (Wolverhampton's The Lockworks Cinema) and multi-storey car park chic (The Island Cinema in Lytham St Annes).
But for all their variety, they all share the same ethos: a cinema that's focussed on serving the community with a diverse range of films, presented in accessible ways and at affordable prices.
Cinema Paradiso
"Forest Cinema encapsulates what we do," says James Jervis, director of the family firm PDJ Management.
"The area definitely needs a cinema, and our kind ties very well into the type of community around here. There are lots of independent businesses here, and we try to offer experiences crafted for this specific community rather than just the generic cut and paste that you get with the chains."
These experiences include dedicated autism-friendly screenings (where the lights are dimmed instead of switched off entirely and not every ticket is sold so it's less busy), as well as those for seniors and people with babies. They ran a whole series of screenings for Waltham Forest Pride in July, and when we speak, are planning their programming for Black History Month in October.
"Obviously we have to work within the constraints of the building [which is leased from Waltham Forest council] and its layout, but we've put our own spin on it by tying into what's going on in the community so that everyone's represented," Jervis says.
"We still want to offer all the things you expect when you go to the cinema," he adds, which might explain those nuclear slushies behind the till, "but we want to offer it at a price that people can afford, especially at this time," he adds.
Considering that a family of four can have a night at the movies for just over £20, Forest Cinema is definitely affordable. You also get all mod-cons, including 4K projectors and 7.1 sound in each screen – PDJ had to buy all the equipment new, as when they took over the site, everything had been stripped out by squatters. So they went for the best available.
In the beginning...
This kind of set-up is a far cry from the Jervis family's roots in cinema, which go back five generations.
Back in the 1870s, Tom Jervis showed "flickering pictures" at the Jervis Fairgrounds in the Lickey Hills outside Birmingham. These flickering pictures were an early iteration of a projector – "Imagine one of those flick books where as you turn a page, a man moves slightly in a very rudimentary form of animation," Jervis tells me.
"It was basically that but with a big lightbulb behind it to create a shadow that moved across a white sheet."
Rudimentary it may have been, but for the time, it would have been quite a spectacle. This was 20-odd years before the Lumière brothers held the first screening of their Cinématographe in Paris and effectively invented cinema.
The Jervis family opened its first 'proper' cinema in the 1920s, and by the 1950s had "30 or 40" dotted around the Midlands, Jervis says. But those venues were unrecognisable from those it has today – each only had a single screen and showed everything from the news and cartoons through to movies.
Gradually the cinemas were sold off one by one, with the last changing hands in the 1990s. That business was wound down before Jervis' parents started in the industry again in the guise of the current company, PDJ Management.
Their first cinema as PDJ was The Majestic in Kings Lynn, which is a Grade II listed building. James joined the family firm a few years ago.
Some of us would rather run a mile than work with our parents, but Jervis says it's very harmonious, with everyone on the same page in terms of the business model and what type of venues they should be targeting.
"Though our board meetings are probably a bit less formal than most companies'," he adds.
Back to the future
What with the boom in streaming and smartphones, cinema has had a rough ride of late. But Jervis says this is nothing new.
"It's been far worse in the past," he points out. "After VHS came out, UK cinema admissions dropped dramatically. Before then, cinemas could rely on playing the same films over and over, because there wasn't really any competition – TV only had three channels, and you couldn't record anything off the box.
"But then summer blockbusters really revolutionised cinema at a time everyone was saying it was dead. Then the spread of the multiplex led to another surge, and 2018 and 2019 were record years."
Those two years saw the highest UK cinema admissions since 1970, in fact. But we all know what happened next.
Despite the lockdown years and the growth of streaming, Jervis remains optimistic that cinema still has a place in the multi-screen environment that has grown up around it.
"Post-Covid, we've seen a really positive progression of our type of cinema – one that might have fewer seats than some rivals, but that offers a much better experience," he says.
Indeed, cinema as a medium remains remarkably robust. This August has been the best for UK cinema since 2018, and the second-best month overall since the pandemic. "It just goes to show, if the product is there, people will come," Jervis says.
I have one last question, one I'm guessing that most people who work in cinema are asked quite a lot nowadays. What would he say to someone who has the attitude 'Why would I go to the cinema when I can watch the same films at home on my sofa?'
His response is annoyingly diplomatic.
"Deliveroo boomed during Covid, and it's a similar situation – some people want restaurant food at home, some want it out," he says. "There's space for both to co-exist."
But despite this even-handedness, he is passionate about what cinema can offer.
"To thrive, cinemas need to make the experience something you can't get in your living room," he says.
"When you walk into a cinema and the screen is 15 metres across, and you're with 100 other people all laughing at the same jokes and crying at the same scenes – that's something you can’t replicate at home. That communal experience is becoming rarer and rarer nowadays, and cinema is a really accessible way to get that."
After all, isn't that what communities are built on?
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