It’s what you do that shows what you want.

Renato Cardoso, from the UCKG Website

I was saddened to see a report in the LondonPaper last week announcing the proposals for converting yet another cinema into a church. When I used to live in Plumstead, South East London, I regularly passed through  Woolwich, and at the end of the High Street was the New Wine Church, another converted cinema.

Clearly empty cinemas are ripe for redevelopment, a ready-made auditorium and central town location make them ideal properties for conversion, and as more small cinemas close, in the face of increasing competition from the multiplexes, being stretched for product by the studios, and even being pressurised by the sale of counterfeit DVDs, there is and increasing number available.

But what has happened to the EMD in Waltham Forest is a sorry tale indeed. The full story can be found on the McGuffin website, an organisation founded to save the cinema, but to summarise, after being grade 2 listed by English Heritage in 2001, the EMD, a working cinema, was sold in 2003 by its owners for twice the market value to the United Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) a rather dubious Brazilian organisation that already has over 20 properties in the London area, including one in Kilburn, and Catford.

Once they had purchased the EMD, the church immediately closed it to the public and applied for a change in use. Against fierce opposition from the town, and the council, the permission was denied, an appeal lost, and the church ordered to sell the property. Although it was put up for sale and bids received, the church rejected these and the cinema has since fallen into disrepair. The McGuffin Society has campaigned vigorously for the council to submit a compulsory purchase order against the church, which has refused to do so, and now the situation is that the church has made another revised application for use including ‘community use’, which the council is moving towards supporting.

According to previous reports, the church made similar concessions to gain approval for a development in Catford, but once this had been approved, the church became uncooperative and the former cinema is now solely a church building.

The McGuffin Society organised a protest on 18 April, which sadly I could not attend, which was attended by over 400 people, so clearly the feeling is strong that this should not go ahead. Even though I am not a resident of Waltham Forest, I agree that this development should be halted and the use returned to a cinema for the community.

The quotation from the church website actually reflects how I feel about the proposals for this cinema, or any cinema that is threatened with closure and redevelopment. I don’t want the church to have this cinema, and I’ll do what I can to support the campaign, and I urge everyone to do so.

Other articles about the EMD:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/hitchcocks-old-gem-1671058.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8006735.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5184501/Tony-Robinson-campaigns-to-save-cinema-where-Alfred-Hitchcock-saw-first-films.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23677247-details/Stars+join+protest+to+save+cinema/article.do

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/4303512.WALTHAMSTOW__Hundreds_campaign_to_save_EMD/

http://archipelago-of-truth.blog.co.uk/2009/02/11/the-emd-cinema-and-the-subtle-art-of-sitting-on-the-fence-while-looking-decisive-5553901/

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/search/4245135.WALTHAMSTOW__Public_opinion_voiced_on_EMD/