Ultimate Picture Palace
Encyclopedia
The Ultimate Picture Palace is a historic grade II listed cinema situated in Jeune Street off the Cowley Road in east Oxford
, England
. When first opened in 1911 it was Oxford's first purpose built cinema.
The Jeune Street cinema opened on 24 February 1911 and closed in 1917 when the manager was called up for war service. The building lay abandoned for many years before being taken over as a furniture warehouse.
In 1976, the cinema reopened as the Penultimate Picture Palace under the management of Bill Heine
and Pablo Butcher. The first film to be shown was Winstanley
. Under the new management the cinema gained a reputation for showing an eclectic and provocative range of films that set the cinema apart from the mainstream theatres of the time.
When the Penultimate Picture Palace was forced to close in 1994, the future for the building looked bleak.
For a month in the summer of 1994, it was squatted and run as a free cinema by the Oxford Freedom Network before being acquired by Saied Marham and his brother Zaid who spent £40,000 restoring the classical facade. They reopened as the Ultimate Picture Palace in 1997.
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. When first opened in 1911 it was Oxford's first purpose built cinema.
History
The Oxford Picture Palace, as it was first known, was founded by Frank Stuart, licensee of the Elm Tree Tavern on the corner of Cowley Road and Jeune Street. Frank Stuart's Electric Theatre on Castle Street can lay claim to being Oxford's first cinema having opened some three months earlier.The Jeune Street cinema opened on 24 February 1911 and closed in 1917 when the manager was called up for war service. The building lay abandoned for many years before being taken over as a furniture warehouse.
In 1976, the cinema reopened as the Penultimate Picture Palace under the management of Bill Heine
Bill Heine
Bill Heine is the Sunday Morning presenter on BBC Radio Oxford 95.2 FM . He has worked for BBC Radio Oxford since 1983, and is considered by many to be very opinionated and perhaps somewhat controversial in the field of radio presenting...
and Pablo Butcher. The first film to be shown was Winstanley
Winstanley (film)
Winstanley is the title of a film made in 1975 in the UK by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, based on the 1961 David Caute novel Comrade Jacob....
. Under the new management the cinema gained a reputation for showing an eclectic and provocative range of films that set the cinema apart from the mainstream theatres of the time.
When the Penultimate Picture Palace was forced to close in 1994, the future for the building looked bleak.
For a month in the summer of 1994, it was squatted and run as a free cinema by the Oxford Freedom Network before being acquired by Saied Marham and his brother Zaid who spent £40,000 restoring the classical facade. They reopened as the Ultimate Picture Palace in 1997.
Further reading
- Ian Meyrick, Oxfordshire Cinemas, Tempus PublishingTempus PublishingTempus Publishing was an England-based publishing company. It was founded in 1993, as The Chalford Publishing Company, by Alan Sutton and others. Tempus were part of the Nonsuch Publishing Group. Tempus mainly published history books and had bases in Germany, France, Belgium and the United States...
, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7524-4333-1.