Sean McGeady

Beneath the boring blockbusters and passé multiplex programming, there lie the sewers of independent film exhibition, a kind of nether realm where Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor is more popular than Thor: Love and Thunder.  Yes, bad movies are big business too. Whether presenting on pub projectors or 50-foot screens, the underworld is awash with independent exhibitors for whom low-budget genre fare is infinitely more interesting than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. ‘Bad’, ‘cult’, ‘trash’, whatever you call it, it’s all out there: slapdash 1950s sci-fi, trashy 1960s and 1970s exploitation, 1980s cop schlock, 1990s direct-to-video martial arts movies. You’ve just got to know where to find it. Welcome to the gutters of cinema, where good taste goes to die.  ‘You’re at the bottom end of the cinephile gene pool when you like these kinds of movies,’ says Richard Clark, who operates as Token Homo and hosts Bar Trash at London’s Genesis Cinema. Here, fans converge to devour such demented delights as 1955’s Creature with the Atom Brain and 1973’s wickedly weird Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. Tickets cost £1, there are competitions and prizes, and themed cocktails during the intermissions. Sure, sometimes they’re one star movies – but they’re always five star experiences Each Bar Trash screening is a celebration of an extinct kind of cinema. Many of these movies were put together by inexperienced, underfunded idealists whose, let’s say, ‘unique’ approach to problem-solving resulted i

There’s a rowdy revival underway in London. Usually, when a film begins, the room is gripped by hushed anticipation. Not here. At the Genesis Cinema in Mile End, as the lights go down the gloves come off. This is Kung Fu Cinema – and there’s only one rule: make some noise. The bimonthly event kicks off with casual drinks in the bar, soundtracked by hip-hop tracks and the thwack of arcade touchstones such as Tekken 3, before culminating in a raucous 10pm screening of a Hong Kong classic, MCed by a man for whom martial arts is a lifelong love. Marlon Palmer has been an exhibitor and distributor of Black cinema for more than 20 years and a kung fu fan for even longer. As a kid, he was introduced to martial arts by his older stepbrother. Soon he came to idolise Bruce Lee. Later, he found cinema.  Photograph: CHANNEL 5 BROADCASTINGKung Fu Cinema founder Marlon Palmer grew up idolising Bruce Lee In the 1980s, Palmer was a regular at renowned late-night London picturehouses like the Rio in Dalston, the Curzon Turnpike Lane and the Odeons in Wood Green and Holloway. Back then, there were few opportunities to see non-white heroes on the big screen and, against a backdrop of racism and riots sparked by the National Front and Metropolitan Police, the genre’s themes of resistance against injustice, as well as the sheer flip-kicking cool of its protagonists, proved popular with Black audiences.  Kung fu films resonate with the Black community. We’re looking for those heroes – the guy th