Glasgow Film Theatre
Coordinates: 55°51′58″N 4°15′40″W / 55.866°N 4.261°W
The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) is an independent cinema in the city centre of Glasgow. GFT is a registered charity. It occupies a purpose-built cinema building, first opened in 1939, and now protected as a category B listed building.
GFT's predecessor, the Cosmo, was Scotland's first arts cinema and only the second purpose-built arthouse in Britain, after the Curzon Mayfair in London. Opened on 18 May 1939, it was also the last cinema to be built in Glasgow before the outbreak of WW2.
The Cosmo arrived at the close of an important decade for British film culture. With the advent of sound in film, language became a barrier and popular films from the continent quickly disappeared from British screens. In Glasgow, audiences for world cinema were served by the Film Society of Glasgow. Founded in 1929, this was the first cultural film group in Scotland, and its growing membership demonstrated a real appetite for foreign-language film in the city.
In fact, Glaswegians in this period had a healthy appetite for film in general: in 1939, they went to the cinema an average 51 times a year, compared to 35 times for the rest of Scotland, and 21 times in England. And they were well-served for cinemas – by the close of the decade, the city could boast 114 in all, with a total seating capacity of more than 175,000. But there was, as yet, no commercial arthouse cinema.
Spotting a gap in the market, in stepped George Singleton, member of one of Glasgow's illustrious cinema chain families. He was joined by Charles Oakley, Chair of the Film Society and the Scottish Film Council, and together they created the Cosmo – the name a snappy shortening of ‘Cosmopolitan’, a small cinema in Cambridge known to Oakley.
Singleton approached renowned local architects James McKissack and WJ Anderson II to work on the new cinema. Their design for the Cosmo's geometric, windowless façade was influenced by the work of Willem Marinus Dudok, a leading Dutch modernist architect. The international theme was continued outside in the choice of cladding materials – a mix of Ayrshire brick finished with faiance cornices, set on a base of black Swedish granite – and inside, where a globe was installed over the stalls entrance. In its original layout, there was just a single auditorium, seating 850.
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