For The Love Of Cinema: Reflecting On Cinema’s Influence In My Early Years (June, 2025)
Whilst some found God in a Church, I found God in the cinema.
As a child, I could spend all day there. Sat back in the patterned, threadbare chairs, lost in a world of heroes and villains. A few decades later, I am convinced that the flickering images before me were a portal, an opening, a ‘golden-ticket’ into another dimension — one more alluring than the one I was part of.
Although I could not possibly find the words to articulate this experience at the time, this entity, coming out of the screens, drifting within the perimeters of those darkened rooms, latching itself onto me as if some willing subject, was a spiritual experience.
A worthy investment for what was about to happen.
Something transcendental, I’m sure, was about to take place.
The Origin Stories.
July 2006.
Bryan Singer’s ‘Superman Returns’ is now playing in cinema to critical acclaim.
Like a pilgrim, I follow in the footsteps of my older brother as we navigate our way, through inner-city terrain, towards ‘Leisure World’; an orange globe multi-area cinema, standing on the edges of the city’s seafront.
“Issa, why is it that nobody recognises Clark Kent as Superman?”
“What does ‘being in the same universe’ mean?”
“The ninja turtles REALLY live in that drain!?”
I am six years old and have officially reached the age of initiation; granted full-access into the world of comic books and superheroes; and although he doesn’t know it yet, throughout the ninety-minutes, he will be promoted to my personal-advisor, my chief-in-command, the loyal Watson to my Holmes — the font of knowledge to my six-year old’s mind’s incessant questions.
“Who is that?”
“What does that mean?”
“Isn’t that the character from earlier?”
“Issa… Issa! He’s going to betray him, I know it!”
Although I can tell he would rather enjoy watching the movie without my running commentary, he will never shout at me or discourage me from showing my enthuasism. There will be a few more years we spend together at the cinema — X Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Avatar (2009), Robin Hood (2010), Alice in Wonderland (2011) The Dark Knight Rises (2012) — and The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002), are just some of my earliest, most joyous, childhood memories.
My Mum and him will soon give me their blessing — allowing me (although this is contentious) to head off on my adventures, where I will go on to spend many fruitful years climbing trees, making dens, cycling through the neighbourhood, playing knock-door-run, and, just like before, slip back into the cinema — this modern-day tabernacle, where for a few pounds, and two hours out of my day, I could commune with God and return to society, tweaked and reconfigured, thinking about myself and the world just a little bit differently than when I first walked in.
I am now nineteen years old, and I am now working part-time as an usher at my local theatre.
From the aisle-slips, I look on in wonder at the faces of guests, bewitched and entranced by the spectacles on stage. At the snapping on of the lights at the interval, I watch smiles come across even the most hardened of guests as they emerge out of this experience.
By the end of the show, there is a general gaiety as two-thousand strangers flock out of the doors and back into the rainy streets of Southampton, whistling tunes and chatter excitedly about what they had just seen.
It is the same every night.
And in the pages of my journal, I scribble down my findings — the transformative power of the theatre, when strangers commune under one roof for a shared experience, is unmatched.
On my days off, I will find refuge in coffee shops, and in pubs, reading the screenplays of the same movies I grew up with. I am dissecting them, poring through them, with the same forensic scrutiny as a detective — looking beyond what is given to me, in an attempt to understand the subtleties, the things left unsaid.
I am fascinated by characters: fascinated by their intent, what they say but, rather, what they don’t.
Even to this day, cinema has remained a fixture in my personal Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Wherever I am in the world, a trip is incomplete without a visit to the big screen.
After all these years, the cinema continues to grow alongside me.
They make me think.
They make me wonder.
Perhaps that’s why these places — cinemas, theatres, libraries — feel more than just walls and seats. They hold something — a quiet hush, a gentle presence.
And so, I am left with this:
Beyond the tabernacle, churches and temples… might God dwell in these rooms too? Is it possible — absurd, even — to believe that the sacred could find its home here? That one can have a spiritual experience in the most unlikeliest of places?
