Scala!!! Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of...
(Scala!!! Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world's wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits)
Ali Catterall & Jane Giles
- 2023
- Great-Britain
- Documentary
- 1h36mn
- Original version with French subtitles
- Color
French premiere
The saga of The Scala, the London alternative venue from 1978 to 1993, patronized by over a million people taunting Thatcherian censorship. On the same day, a Bergman movie might precede a porn film, the only rule for Stephen Woolley and his co-programmer Jayne Pilling being the quality of the films. As testified by their fascinating paper billboards whose eclectic imagery was susceptible of shocking “young catholic girls”, the Scala was an altar of transgression, where LGBTQ+ or punk expressivity could breathe as freely as Kung-fu or horror, establishing a sort of ideal filmography. The film is told by the actors and patrons, with a trove of archives and extracts, and as a bonus a superb score from Barry Adamson. Let’s plunge back into an era of (counter-)cultural and rebellious choices.
John Waters