Nigel Smith outside the Screen On The Green

A FILM buff who leads walking tours across Islington’s cinemas has said he would welcome a plaque dedicated to the woman who made Angel’s Screen on the Green cinema world-famous as it prepares for its 110th anniversary.

Nigel Smith said he would love to see a plaque above the Upper Street institution paying homage to Romaine Hart, the visionary cinema owner who turned it from a fleapit dive into an arthouse cinema at the cutting edge of experimental movies.

Describing her as the person who is “arguably responsible for the boutique-style cinemas we have today,” Mr Smith celebrated her as a “rare female figure in largely male-dominated industry”.

The building is one of “very very few” cinemas in the country to have been continually-operating for more than 100 years, he said.

It is also the longest continually-running film theatre in the borough.

To mark the cinema’s birthday on October 16, Mr Smith suggested Islington could consider installing a plaque to Ms Hart, as part of their Heritage Plaques programme to notable people in the borough.

Another possibility could be that Everyman put one up, he added – the group took over running the theatre in 2008.

Ms Hart died in 2021 aged 88.

Mr Smith said: “The fact that Everyman hasn’t changed the name of the Screen on the Green is a great tribute. She was the person who revived the cinema’s fortunes, and rechristened it The Screen on the Green.

“She was a remarkable woman and a true pioneer of cinema programming and later film distribution.”

The tour guide, who co-founded the Tufnell Park Film Club in 2012 and works on Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones’s BBC Radio 4’s film and television programme Screenshot, said people who come on his tour always ask why there isn’t a plaque to commemorate her.

Romaine Hart

He described how after being raised working in the Bloom cinema chain, which belonged to her father, she took over running it in 1971 when she was in her late 30s.

As soon as she took the reins, she turned it from a “down-at-heel fleapit” to something with a “comepletely different approach,” he said.

Mr Smith said: “Because they were unable to show first-run films from the major studios, the Screen on the Green started showing European arthouse films and independent films from America, at a time when the indie film scene was starting to flourish.

“It also became a repertory cinema showing the greats of world cinema. So many people got their film history education here.”

One person who learned the ropes as an 18-year-old usher at the Screen on The Green is Stephen Wooley, who went on to produce Made In Dagenham and The Crying Game and founded the Scala Cinema in King’s Cross in 1981.

In an obituary he wrote for her in the Guardian, Mr Wooley said: “Romaine’s attributes are too numerous to list but, as a woman in the quite frankly sluggish and male-dominated 70s British film industry, her acumen, good taste, quick wit and infectious sense of humour stood out as a beacon of hope for so many who followed.”

He added: “She transformed cinema-going in that little part of London where I grew up and brought excitement back in a pre-home video, pre-multichannel TV time period, when most people were pronouncing the film industry as dead in the water.”

Mr Smith said: “It was becoming a very cool venue. Even in the ‘90s, Quentin Tarantino called it ‘the coolest cinema in London’.”

It is one of the few cinemas left in London still showing films on original 35mm reels.

In the 1980s Ms Hart also launched a film distribution arm which distributed films such as My Beautiful Laundrette and This is Spinal Tap.

And in an age when many cinemas have closed and the history jasbeen lost, Screen on the Green is significant as one of the “very very few” cinemas in the country to have been in continual operation for more than 100 years, said Mr Smith.

He added: “Hopefully this cinema will continue to show films – on film – for many more years to come.”

Managers at The Screen On The Green could not be reached this week.

Visit www.nigelsmithwalks.com for more information.