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When you hear the phrase ‘cultural film hub’, the Essex town of Romford won’t be the first place that springs to mind. And yet, nestled on the third floor of The Mercury, its shopping centre, you’ll find a new endeavour that’s lit a fuse under not just in its community, but across the UK. This cinema boasts members from as far and wide as the Hebrides and beyond the UK itself, many of whom will never even attend.
Membership to the Lumiere Romford, a not-for-profit, community-led cinema similar to London’s The Castle Cinema or Portland’s Clinton Street Theatre, costs £30 a year, but it offers a USP that marks it out from the average cinema membership. Alongside discounted tickets and concessions, from May 2026, when the Lumiere begins to make a profit, members will pocket a share as ‘Lumiere credits’. They’ll be redeemable at the cinema – a kind of collectivist approach to cinema going.
The Lumiere, which opened in April, is the brainchild of 52-year-old former Mercury Shopping Centre manager and Romford Film Festival organiser Spencer Hawken, a cult movie devotee. The walls of this old multiplex in the shopping centre are now covered with old movie posters, red velvet barriers adding a touch of old Hollywood glamour to the lobby. There are seven screens and plans to turn an eighth into a ‘mini Phoenix Arts Club’, a nod to the off-Soho venue known for its cabaret and comedy nights.
The eureka moment for Lumiere Romford came when Hawken discovered that nearly a quarter of his borough’s cinema-goers travel into central London for their movie outings. ‘Our idea was to create a central London cinema in a periphery London town,’ he remembers. Crowd funders were engaged to spread the word to friends and family, while local interest was drummed up via interviews with news outlets. From there, word of mouth spread quickly. The cinema now boasts more than 4000 members – and that number is climbing. ‘If a business model like this works, it shows other communities that they can get together and save their own cinema spaces,’ says Hawken. ‘Hopefully this can make people rethink cinema.’
Running the Lumiere as a charity also cuts down business rates, making it easier for Hawkens and his 11-strong crew to keep the lights on and the bills paid. Tickets prices are cheap – £6.99 for non-members, £4 for members – and if you’re a family of four, it’s only £18. Prices are fixed, whether you’re seeing a big new blockbuster, an anniversary re-release or buzzy indie film. Communal spirit runs through everything the cinema does. There are Monday morning parent-and-baby screenings where seats are taken out to accommodate prams (‘When you talk to parents after, they’re so thrilled because they felt so socially isolated being at home’), and over-60s can see films for free on Thursdays between 10-12pm, with hot drinks provided in the winter months.
The something-for-everyone programming ethos draws on Hawken’s past as a video shop manager in the 1980s, when he’d host Friday night back-room screenings, and a later tenure running a local film festival. As well as the big-ticket blockbusters and anniversary re-releases, there are ‘Mystery Movie Nights’ dedicated to sci-fi and Bollywood, where you can expect to see so-bad-they’re-good movies like Filipino espionage turkey For Y’er Height Only, musical singalongs including iconic hits like Grease and all-day sci-fi and horror-themed mystery movie marathons on the slate. more. ‘Our booker calls us “the Prince Charles of the east,”’ says Hawken. ‘I like to think we’re a mix of Genesis and Prince Charles, but on a very big scale.’
Cult film coded, a recent all-day video nasty marathon in collaboration with The Dark Side Magazine saw over 400 film fans flock to the Lumiere. According to Hawken, it felt less like a marathon and more like a whole convention. ‘We had stars from the films there, stalls, DVDs, merch, posters, you name it.’
I like to think we’re a mix of the Genesis and Prince Charles cinemas, but on a very big scale
Also on the slate is a new fund to create London’s most neurodiverse-friendly cinema screen. The Lumiere already operates relaxed screenings with lower volume levels and raised lights, but the funding will enable them to include audio-descriptive head-sets and glasses which will generate customisable subtitles for the wearer for sight-and-audio impaired patrons.
Hawken plans to continue going bigger and bolder with his cult film events. In December, Italian horror director and frequent Dario Argento collaborator Lamberto Bava will be attending a Q&A screening of 1980 giallo Macabre. For now, Hawken is just trying to keep up with all the support they’ve received: ‘It’s just that slow drip feed of things that are going out there all over the place that just makes me think: Oh, we might have actually done something really exciting here. I’m always a little amazed at where we’re going.’
Lumiere Romford will be playing IMDb’s top 100 horror movies during October. Members can buy passes for all hundred films for £75 – or 75p per movie – or £100 for non-members. Individual non-member tickets are on sale at £6.99.