'Penultimate Picture Palace (Grade II) (1278732)'. They reopened it as the Ultimate Picture Palace in June 1996. Then brothers Saied and Zaid Marham bought it and spent £40,000 restoring the neoclassical façade. For a month that summer it was squatted by the Oxford Freedom Network, which reopened it as Studio 6 Cinema.

In 1994 Heine closed the Penultimate Picture Palace.

Under the new management the cinema gained a reputation for showing an eclectic and provocative range of films that set it apart from the mainstream cinemas of the time. The first film to be shown was Winstanley. They added a sculpture of Al Jolson's hands by John Buckley to the façade. In 1976 Bill Heine and Pablo Butcher reopened the cinema as the Penultimate Picture Palace. The cinema was closed and stood unused for many years before being turned into a furniture warehouse. In 1917 the manager was conscripted to serve in the First World War. It opened on 24 February 1911 as the Oxford Picture Palace. Also in 1910 work started to build Stuart's second cinema on land in Jeune Street behind the Elm Tree.

He was the licensee of the Elm Tree pub on the corner of Cowley Road and Jeune Street. History įrank Stuart opened Oxford's first cinema, the Electric Theatre, in Castle Street, in 1910. The cinema has been a Grade II listed building since 1994. It is Oxford's only surviving independent cinema, showing a mixture of independent, mainstream, foreign language, and classic films. The Ultimate Picture Palace is an independent cinema in Oxford, England. Rare surviving example of a simple early cinema

Oxford movie theatre