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In 1939 Glasgow was a city addicted to film, home to more cinemas per person than anywhere else in the UK. When the residents of ‘cinema city’ clocked off work they checked into the pictures, from the glamour of La Scala to the hardscrabble Black Cat. Today, all but one of these bygone cinemas has closed their doors. What happened to these forgotten cathedrals of film?

New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser goes in search of ‘cinema city’ today, delving into Glasgow’s very intimate relationship with film. He is given a walking tour of Glasgow’s forgotten cinemas by Gordon Barr from Scottish Cinemas; hears from Alison Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film, about what makes Glaswegian audiences tick; joins Shireen Taylor from the arts organisation Offline, at a new community cinema in Govanhill; and goes along to a family film screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre where he meets cinema-goers who will be the audiences of the future.

Producer: Mohini Patel
Readers: Belinda Naylor and Tom Alban