Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive

Mick (Percival) Mitchell was born in Liverpool in 1926, one of four children. His father was a labourer in a sugar works, his mother a housewife. He left school at fourteen, and one of his first jobs was packing and dispatching cans of film for a distributor in Liverpool; he later worked in a variety of different jobs--in engineering, building and for an electricity company, among others. In 1945, he was called up for National Service, and served with the Army in Greece and Egypt. Although Mr Mitchell was not among Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain's core informants, his interview, which took place at his home in Oldham, Greater Manchester on 10 May 1995, was transcribed in 2017 and is now presented alongside a written memoir of his cinemagoing that he sent to the project.

In the interview, Mr Mitchell recalls his early cinemagoing in Liverpool, the cinemas he went to--the differences between them, their typical film programmes, and so on. He talks about his experiences as a film packer during the 1940s, and about going to the pictures in Egypt and Greece during his time in the Army. He was joined part way through the interview by his wife, Margaret, and the couple share memories of cinemas and filmgoing in Manchester, and some anecdotes about people they knew who appeared in films.

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