The Prince Charles Cinema

We are The Prince Charles Cinema, the last of the independents still operating in London’s cine-famous ‘West End’. The site itself sprang to life as a Theatre back in 1962 before making the rather interesting shift to becoming a film-house of ill repute, which just so happened to host the UK’s longest theatrical runs of both Emmanuelle & Caligula! Then in 1991, the early seeds of The Prince Charles Cinema were planted and from there this mighty little cine-behemoth began to grow. We now find ourselves as one of the most popular Independent Cinema’s in the UK (if not THE WORLD!). So what kind of films do we screen? To the uninitiated you may think we only allow the Back To The Future and Indiana Jones movies to reach our screen, but that’s merely the tip of the cinematic iceberg. In the past we’ve seen seasons dedicated to Paul Thomas Anderson run in the same month as an all-nighter dedicated to the Jurassic Park series (yes, even the bad ones). We’ve had Jacques Rivette & Ingmar Bergman ‘sampler’ seasons run alongside those for 007 and Studio Ghibli. Epic 70mm presentaions of 2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY in one screen whilst people Aca-Alonged to Pitch Perfect in the other. To put it plainly; we screen everything! From cinema’s origins through to the present day, from all corners of the globe, and presented from a variety of formats including; 35mm, 70mm and Digital [which includes Digital Cinema Package [or DCP], BluRay, DVD, DVCAM and DigiBeta.].* If it’s a film that we believe our audience wants or would enjoy seeing on the big-screen, we’ll run it. Don’t see your favourite film in our listings? Tell us! But being the only independent venue in cinema’s busiest square-mile immediately makes you the underdog of the industry, which is why at a glance our programme tends to be a little different to what you might expect to see in the West End. We also have Ushers in our screens, something you don’t expect to see in cinemas in the West End anymore… but we digress.