The Warwick Student Cinema interview: Meet the team running the show

There are few places that you would expect to find more than 300 students queuing to watch Barbie. A chemistry lecture theatre during Freshers’ Week is probably not one of them.  

Yet, during my first week at the University of Warwick, that was exactly the scene I found myself in. Alongside my new flatmates, who I had known for just a couple of days, I watched students being turned away from the sold-out screening while those who had made it inside settled into rows of lecture seats to watch a film together. 

Squashed into the end of a row I looked away from the screen about halfway through and couldn’t help but laugh. There was something oddly comforting in being among so many new university students who, for whatever reason, had chosen to step away from the chaos of Freshers’ Week for a couple of hours to sit inside and watch Barbie and Ken sing their hearts out.  

From new friends sharing jokes to students so exhausted from nights out that they were battling to stay awake, it was a mix of people who had come together in an odd setting that somehow worked. 

Behind the scenes, an entire student-run operation had brought 300 people together to sit in a lecture theatre and watch a film

What I didn’t realise at the time was just how many people had made that screening happen, and that all of those involved were students. It was students selling the tickets, stewarding on the door and even working the projectors. Behind the scenes, an entire student-run operation had brought 300 people together to sit in a lecture theatre and watch a film.  

That operation is Warwick Student Cinema (WSC), the University’s non-profit, fully licensed independent cinema.  

“It’s quite insane that it exists, it sometimes feels like a tightrope walk,” Oliver Lambert, WSC’s Films Officer, said in conversation with The Boar.  

Its workings are not only impressive because it’s run by students, but also because of the equipment that makes it notable far beyond a university campus.  

“The enterprise has the largest 35mm and 70mm programme outside of London, is one of only 13 UK cinemas to screen 70mm film and has Coventry and Warwickshire’s first RGB laser projector,” Lambert explained. 

“Our audio system is also a lot better than most normal cinemas,” he added. 

“A lot of time is devoted to running the cinema,” explained Isaac Gregory, WSC’s Treasurer, who believes that it is one of the University’s societies that sees the “biggest cash flow”.  

With each attendee paying £3 for a ticket, the cinema can take up to £900 a night and, with an average of eight showings per week, over £25,000 a month. 

Selecting what films are shown is crucial in determining the income that WSC takes and is therefore a decision that is not taken lightly.  

It is a “group discussion that is open to all WSC members so anyone who wants to can come along and give their input”. 

The programme that this collaboration creates does not stop at weekly screenings: WSC also runs all-nighters that bring “hundreds of students” into the cinema to watch films through the early hours of the morning. 

One Twilight all-nighter drew in a crowd of 200, turning what would usually be a night spent chatting in flat kitchens into several hours of watching vampires and werewolves on the big screen. 

This way that WSC brings students together is exactly what made Gregory fall in love with the organisation.  

“The reactions are always incredible and if you were not in a crowd of students, they would not be as dramatic,” the second-year Film and TV student said. 

“There’s something about being with students that I think creates a different sort of dynamic,” he added. 

It is creating this exciting atmosphere that WSC seems to do particularly well. A screening can turn into an event: whether it be hundreds staying up to watch all films from the Shrek franchise in one evening, many rushing from a seminar to arrive in time for an old classic, or a crowd collectively reacting to a moment that would probably feel very different watched in a living room.  

“We want you to go to a cinema and enjoy it and being able to give you that is actually what we’re so proud of,” Lambert expressed. 

Those in charge do not want your mind to be occupied by who is operating the projectors or whether the books are balanced

In some ways, the less that the audience thinks about the running of WSC the better. Those in charge do not want your mind to be occupied by who is operating the projectors or whether the books are balanced because once the lights go down your focus should be on the on-screen action that is about to unfold in front of your eyes.  

“We don’t want people to realise that there are a bunch of students stressing behind the scenes and running the whole thing,” the finalist explained. 

I reply to this comment and offer Lambert some reassurance, when I sat in that chemistry lecture theatre during my Freshers’ Week, I had no idea that it was students behind it all. I had simply gone to watch Barbie with my new friends. 

And perhaps that is what makes WSC so unique: students put in hours of work so that their peers can sit back, relax, and enjoy a quality cinema right on their doorstep.