The importance of London’s lost cinema

King’s Cross in the eighties was the scabbiest, dodgiest, scariest and most alternative place in central London – and the crumbling Scala cinema was its beating heart. Memories of this long-shut venue are being revived by the imminent release of a feature-length documentary tracing its brief, colourful history.

The film is named after the cinema but its lengthy subtitle signals the kind of material it depicts: 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.

This sounds an extravagant claim but it clearly was influential in the film world. Its original manager, Stephen Woolly, would go on to direct Mona Lisa, The Crying Game and Carol. And the documentary lists many other filmmakers who passed through as punters, among them current arthouse darling Joanna Hogg – and Steve McQueen, who would go on to win an Oscar for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave.