UK’s first cinema to be restored
Plans to restore a cinema that showed the first publicly screened films in Britain were given the go-ahead by Westminster Council last night. The Regent Street Cinema, which is part of the University of Westminster’s main building, was used by the Lumiere brothers, to perform their first ever moving picture show in the UK in 1896. The university has raised two thirds of the £6m needed for the project. The restored 200-seat cinema is expected to open in April 2015 – 35 years after it closed down.