Built in 1911, Portobello Road’s Electric Cinema can lay claim to being the oldest serving purpose-built cinema in Britain.

​

Renamed The Imperial in 1919, by the sixties it had become a fading and forgotten fleapit.

​

In 1968 a bunch of hippies took it over for late night shows and started an alternative repertory cinema, which ran until 1983.

​

This web site, launched in 2018, aims to bring together musings and memorabilia, which celebrate and acknowledge what was London’s original repertory cinema.