Cinema Museum (London) is a small privately run museum that houses a great collection of film memorabilia and equipment beginning from the 1890s. A quick fact that I learned from my visit was that the building was once a workhouse where Charlie Chaplin lived as a child. The highlight of the tour was the screening of silent films using an old film projector inside a vintage cinema theatre.
Here’s an excerpt from museumlondon website.
The Cinema Museum contains over a million photographs, including cinemas and cinema-going; an extensive collection of artwork and posters; projectors from all eras; usherettes’ uniforms; fixtures and fittings, including ashtrays, carpets. seating and signage: plans and artwork for cinema architecture and interiors; and over 17m feet of film. The printed archive has a large collection of campaign books, cinema sheet music, fan magazines, periodicals and trade magazines, and there’s a library of books about actors and film criticism.
museumslondon.org
And below are some photos of the Cinema Museum taken during my London trip in 2019:
London in not the only place to find specialty museums dedicated to the history of the cinema, here’s a shortlist of other popular film museums worldwide:
- Institut Lumière Lyon, France – The Institut Lumière is an organization and a museum dedicated to the works and legacy of Auguste and Louis Lumière – inventors of the cinématographe and fathers of the cinema.
- Museum of the Cinema Odessa, Ukraine – The museum of cinema is a section of the National Union of Cinematography and is housed in a historic mansion. Odessa is one of the three iconic locations featured in the documentary Man with a Movie Camera by the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov.
- Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Los Angeles, California – Set to open in September 2021, the Academy Museum will be the largest museum in the USA entirely dedicated to the art, science, craft, business, and history of cinema.
- Musée de la Cinémathèque Paris, France – The museum celebrates the living history of cinema and features thousands of artifacts from pre-cinema to modern day film artifacts.
- Cinematek Brussel, Belgium – Cinematek hosts a large archive of around 70,000 movies from the early days of cinema. Visitors also enjoy a wide selection of library materials related to film, lectures, and regular film screenings.
- Museo Nazionale del Cinema Turin, Italy – The museum is housed in the Mole Antonelliana, a historic building and iconic symbol of the City of Turin. Its permanent exhibition features a visual journey of history and media archaeology of cinema and television.
- Cinematheque Centre Manila, Philippines – The Cinematheque features a film museum, classrooms, a café, a souvenir shop, and a library of film-related materials.
thoughts about documentary, media and journalism 