Ups and Downs... 1990s
Sarah Anderson
Electric Cinema regular since 1981
Sarah started The Travel Bookshop in Kensington in 1979 and moved it to Blenheim Crescent in 1981. A truly specialist bookshop for the literary traveller, The Travel Bookshop has been as much of a mainstay in the community as the Electric, being described by Robina Rose as a ‘cave of dreams, inspiring travel in people who hadn’t travelled much before’.
Although Sarah sold the bookshop in 1991/1992, she continued to work for the new owner until 2004. At one point The Travel Bookshop owner bought the Electric but sold it on quickly. Sarah’s resounding memory of the Electric was her 50th birthday party in 1997 when they took out all the seats and had a rave on the rake.
Various reprieves came and went in the early 90s. Alison Davis recalls her husband Martin coming home, and announcing ‘I have bought a cinema!” to open, after a £200,000 refurbishment, with Cinema Paradiso, and the hopes of returning to the glories of the 70s and 80s, programming eclectic double-bills and avant-garde offerings. Indeed, in 1992 Pedro Almodovar was invited to introduce a double bill screening of his work at the Electric. The Spanish auteur, "in the company of a micro-skirted blonde of dubious gender", gamely rambled incoherently about the films and his love of London, apparently his second home, before announcing to a perplexed crowd: "I love New York!".
It was during Martin’s time at the Electric that the Children With Leukemia charity was born. “CWL was a charity started at the Electric by a few of us who were friends of Eric and Larraine Deacon whose son Sam had Leukemia and passed away in 1993. CWL then became CLIC in 1998 and is now ClicSargent.
“The Electric is ‘special’ and the most wonderful environment to see cinema in London.”
Martin Davis, January 2011
Martin’s tireless charity work continues – he is now patron of Shooting Star Children's Hospice, and fundraiser for One2One kids and the Pink Ribbon Ball Breast Cancer
Campaign.
The cinema went through various incarnations, including a set of double seats for the romantically minded moviegoer, and for a brief time was the UK's first black cinema.
But money worries were never far away, and the cinema famously closed in again in the mid 90s.