Set in a Grade II-listed building more than a century old, the tale of The Silver Screen Cinema in Folkestone is packed with history, including one of the most important events in Kent’s film past

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Set in a Grade II-listed building more than a century old, the tale of The Silver Screen Cinema in Folkestone is packed with history, including one of the most important events in Kent’s film past

Set in the upper floors of Folkestone’s grand town hall, the site of The Silver Screen Cinema has an incredible story of amazing firsts as well as near-misses.

Built in 1860 as the town hall, the building boasted a huge auditorium, which acted as an assembly space for public events for up to 500 people. Now the cinema’s main screen, with 379 seats across the stalls and balcony, the auditorium is one of the biggest in the county. It wasn’t until more than 35 years later that the site would become entwined with Kentish cinema history.

“Cinema was first invented in the 1890s,” says Chris Lightwing, co-owner of The Silver Screen Cinema. “But because it had a huge assembly hall, they used to get the town input on various productions. It was a travelling magician called David Devant, who visited Folkestone in 1896, who became the first person to show film in Kent - that’s our claim to fame.”

The films were made by Robert W. Paul and shown to an astounded audience by Devant, using a Theatograph projector.

Capturing the imagination of the locals, the auditorium continued to show films under the name Cinema De Luxe as the popularity of film continued to increase. However, when the government introduced the Cinematograph Act in 1909, requiring the highly flammable nitrate films and projection equipment to be enclosed in a fireproof box for public safety, town hall screenings stopped, leading to the first dedicated cinemas opening in Folkestone.

Something of a boom and bust followed, with Folkestone swelling to five cinemas at one point before shrinking back down again to one, the Central Picture Theatre (later renamed The Cannon) on George Lane, off Rendezvous Street. This would eventually become Folkestone’s longest-serving cinema but was eventually closed down after sustaining severe damage in the Great Storm of 1987.

Meanwhile, the town hall had also been closed and was sold as retail space in the 1980s, seemingly putting an end to the venue that had been one of the first to screen films in the town.

Enter Sandy Wallace, who took on the space and refurbished the abandoned upper floors and opened it as The Silver Screen Cinema in 1990. This included the development of Screen Two, a second, much smaller, auditorium of 60 seats that had previously been used as a courtroom and council chamber in 1905 and still bears the wood-panelled walls listing Folkestone’s mayors, visible to this day.

Fast-forward another decade and the building had been bought back by Folkestone Town Council.

“There was a lot of discussion about what was going to happen with the building because they wanted it to become a council offices, museum and visitor information centre,” says Chris. “Unfortunately, the projection equipment also needed to be replaced and the owner had already invested a lot into the place, and it wasn’t doing that well.”

Chris, who had previously worked in the cinema industry, had returned from London to his home in Dover and threw his hat in the ring to make a go of it.

“We just love the place and we didn’t want to see it closed down - it’d be a real shame if Folkestone was left without a cinema,” he says. “I was only working there part-time when I took it over and I thought, well, you know, maybe take a year to see if we can save it and keep it going. And of course it turned out that was 10 years ago now.”

While Sandy remains a retired partner in the cinema, Chris and his team have been pushing The Silver Screen to bring in new revenue opportunities as they combat the curveballs of Covid-19, the writers’ strike and the rise of streaming platforms.

While the decor evokes the golden era of cinema, with red velvet curtains, pictures of film stars on the walls and original architecture, The Silver Screen strives to reach new audiences.

“The film club was something that was pre-existing when I came here,” says Chris. “It is run by two gentlemen from the area who wanted to build a community to watch some classic films. And as it transpired, classic films were a lot harder to get hold of than current films. So it became gravitated more towards just seeing stuff that we wouldn’t normally show.

“It’s on Thursday morning for retirees and senior citizens, just to make available foreign-language films, critically-acclaimed films, British films, off-beat films, stuff they wouldn’t normally be able to see outside London.”

There is also the Doc Club, which is a monthly documentary showing in conjunction with the Folkestone Doc Fest team where fans of the genre can come and watch films that often have Q&As with the director on screen afterwards.

The cinema also doubles as a key location for both the Doc Fest and Folkestone Film Festival, welcoming live events, presentations and audience-interactive shows.

National Theatre Live showings are also included in the programming, which sees more mainstream pictures played in Screen One’s large auditorium, while Screen two can offer more indie films in a more intimate environment.

“We’re a community cinema and trying to focus on what the town wants, you know, what they want to see,” says Chris. “There’s a lot more interaction with the audience to understand that.”

Of course, the big films still drive footfall, and with blockbusters starting to return to the big screen after the conclusion of the writers’ strike, 2025 is starting to look up for the industry.

“I think when we reopened post-pandemic in 2021, admissions were way down compared with 2019, but I think everyone in the cinema industry, us included, foolishly thought each year there’d be a sort of a steady increase, and that didn’t happen. It plateaued. But this year, all of a sudden, admissions have increased again, so I think people are starting to come back a bit more. There are more interesting films out there, too. So, yeah, we’re cautiously optimistic.”

INFO: folkestonecinema.com