Deptford Cinema is a volunteering project that is uniting Lewisham’s community by creating the area's only cinema

A group of volunteers running a community cinema in south east London say that the film project has brought locals together.

Lewisham was one of only two London boroughs lacking a cinema until volunteers set up Deptford Cinema last year.

The 40-seat cinema has been created out of a converted garage and is entirely community-run, with the group of volunteers meeting every Sunday to select alternative films.

Volunteer Edwin Mingard told London Live: “Lewisham was one of only two boroughs in London that had no cinema of any kind – [not] a large, commercial cinema, a small arthouse cinema, anything like that.

“What that meant was that access to cinema for most people living around here was unaffordable.

“At the same time, there are certain kinds of film that are just hard to see anywhere, so we wanted to show things that are a bit more art house, things that people travel across London to see, so that if you live locally, you can see that Deptford is a place where things like that happen.

“The cinema isn’t the building – it’s the community. That was the point from day one, and I feel like we’ve been very successful in that.

“People often talk about a feeling of dislocation and a feeling that there are people all around you who you’d probably have a lot in common with, if only there were spaces where you’d naturally rub up against each other regularly.

“Volunteering in the cinema has that affect for people – they come together for a shared purpose, which is a love for film, and they discover that they have more in common with people around them than they realise.”

Philip Dale, who also volunteers at Deptford Cinema, said: “The volunteers come up with the ideas, they create the seasons, and they reflect our tastes, and hopefully the tastes of our audience here, and that’s what’s very special about it.”

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