La Charrette was for several decades the smallest cinema

Movie theater

A movie theater, cinema, movie house, picture theater, film theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing motion pictures ....

 in the UK. It closed in February 2008.

A tiny, 23-seat venue, sited in a back garden in the town of Gorseinon

Gorseinon

Gorseinon is a town in southwest Wales, near the Loughor estuary. It was a small village until the late 19th century when it grew around the coal mining and tinplate industries. It is situated in the north west of Swansea, around north west of the city centre...

, near Swansea

Swansea

Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...

, 'La Charrette' (French for 'the carriage') was built from a disused railway carriage. With flock wallpaper and hand-operated curtains, 'La Charrette' began showing films in 1953.

History

The cinema was originally constructed and run by Gwyn Phillips, an electrician who fell in love with the movies in his youth while working as a projectionist. After Mr Phillips died in 1996, 'La Charrette' was kept open by his widow, Rita.

A meticulously kept, hand-written record of every film shown at the cinema reveals that the first movie to be screened there in 1953 was Reluctant Heroes

Reluctant Heroes

Reluctant Heroes is a 1951 British, Technicolor, comedy film, directed by Jack Raymond and starring Ronald Shiner as Sergeant Bell or as Sergeant Able It was produced by Henry Halsted and Byron Film.-Plot summary:...

. That same year, locals were able to see Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist (1948 film)

Oliver Twist is the second of David Lean's two film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels. Following the success of his 1946 version of Great Expectations, Lean re-assembled much of the same team for his adaptation of Dicken's 1838 novel, including producers Ronald Neame and Anthony...

, King Kong

King Kong (1933 film)

King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling apeman creature called Kong who dies in...

and Winchester ‘73

Winchester '73 (1950 film)

Winchester '73 is an American Western film starring James Stewart and Shelley Winters, and released by Universal Pictures in 1950. This is the first of eight collaborations between Stewart and director Anthony Mann. The movie features early roles for Rock Hudson , Tony Curtis, and James Best, and...

. Later decades saw the screening of The French Connection

The French Connection (film)

This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...

and even the controversial Straw Dogs. More recently, Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American war film set during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Robert Rodat. The film is notable for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which depicts the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944....

, Elizabeth

Elizabeth (film)

Elizabeth is a 1998 biographical film written by Michael Hirst, directed by Shekhar Kapur, and starring Cate Blanchett in the title role of Queen Elizabeth I of England, alongside Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes, Sir John Gielgud, Fanny Ardant and Richard Attenborough...

and The Queen were shown.

Closure

Made unsafe by the irreparable decay of its wood-and-steel structure, 'La Charrette' was originally expected to close in October 2007 after a screening of Ocean's 13. However, a visit by film critic Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...

 for BBC2's The Culture Show

The Culture Show

The Culture Show is a weekly BBC Two Arts magazine programme. It is broadcast in the UK on Thursday nights at 7pm, focusing on the best of the week's arts and culture news, covering books, art, film, architecture, music, visual fashion and the performing arts...

resulted in the tiny venue being given a special send-off in February 2008.

The event consisted of a special premiere screening of the previously unseen Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle

Daniel "Danny" Boyle is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director...

 film Alien Love Triangle

Alien Love Triangle

Alien Love Triangle is a 2008 comedy-science fiction short film directed by Danny Boyle. It was produced in 2002.The film was originally intended to be one of a trilogy of 30-minute short films shown together...

(2002), starring Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...

, Courteney Cox

Courteney Cox

Courteney Bass Cox is an American actress, she is best known for her roles as Monica Geller on the NBC sitcom Friends, Gale Weathers in the horror series Scream and as Jules Cobb in the ABC sitcom Cougar Town, for which she earned her first Golden Globe nomination....

 and Heather Graham. For the screening, Branagh made a personal appearance, while Cox and Graham recorded special messages.

Following the screening, the cinema was dismantled and moved to a heritage park in the Gower

Gower Peninsula

Gower or the Gower Peninsula is a peninsula in south Wales, jutting from the coast into the Bristol Channel, and administratively part of the City and County of Swansea. Locally it is known as "Gower"...

.