The work offered for this PhD by Published Works charts the history of cinema exhibition in Britain from the late 1950s to the present. At the start of this period, cinemagoing as a form of public entertainment entered a long period of decline that was only arrested with the development and growth of multiplex cinemas in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite these changes, the feature film itself remained a culturally and commercially valuable artefact, though increasingly this meant the Hollywood film. Whilst due consideration is afforded to the technological changes in cinemas and the cinema apparatus, my work places the development of cinemagoing in a broad social, economic, cultural and political context, and explains how these issues impact upon on-going developments. In the late 1950s, cinemagoing declined partly in response to changing leisure habits, demographic shifts, the growth of consumer culture, television, and the widespread adoption of new broadcast technologies like home video and satellite. The multiplex returned feature films to cinemas, but was a definitively American commercial form closely associated with new forms of leisure and out-of-town retailing. There are also parallels between the context for development of the multiplex in the USA – suburbanisation, shopping malls and reliance on the motorcar – and developments in Britain in the last 30 years. To this end there is a specific emphasis on the development of the multiplex cinema as part of a wider narrative about the re-positioning of cinemagoing as a collective, public form of visual entertainment, in the period from the mid-1980s, in the context of some dramatic changes in the transient nature of capitalism and urban planning. From the early 1990s onwards there was a growing anxiety about the impact of out-of-town developments on Britain’s urban centres, and a concomitant and renewed emphasis on the importance of the urban core rather than the edge. Thus, the key to understanding the evolution of cinema exhibition today is to pay particular attention to urban planning as inherently ideological, shifting and changing in line with broader political, economic and social considerations.

KINO TEATRO LANKOMUMO SVYRAVIMAI EUROPOS SĄJUNGOJE 1990 - 2007 m. Santrauka Nuo 1990 metų prasidėjo kino teatro lankomumo atgimimas, užbaigęs ankstesnį tris dešimtmečius trukusį kino teatro lankomumo mažėjimą. Naujieji amerikietiško tipo kino teatrai – multipleksai – turintys 8 ir daugiau kino sales bei rodantys įspūdingus, finansiniu požiūriu itin sėkmingus filmus, sugrąžino auditoriją į kino teatrus. Bet jau 2001 metais pagal kino teatrų skaičių Europos Sąjungos 15 šalių kino rinka, charakterizuojama kaip galutinai įsotinta ir kurios neįmanoma plėsti vien tik plečiant kino teatrų tinklą. Didžiausias kino teatro lankomumo augimo potencialas stebimas Europos Sąjungos naujosiose šalyse, kur į kino rinkas iki šiol investuota santykinai mažai. Čia palyginus mažas kino ekranų skaičius, tenkantis šalies gyventojams bei mažas kasmetinis apsilankymų skaičius, tenkantis vienam gyventojui. Darbe nustatomos priežastys, sukėlusios kino teatro lankomumo svyravimus, iš kurių pagrindine laikoma – multipleksų plėtra. Darbe teigiama, kad šalyse, kuriose mažiausiai išvystyti multipleksai, yra mažiausias kino teatrų lankomumas. Šis darbas, vertinant jo praktinę reikšmę, turėtų būti aktualus vystantiems kino verslą ir visiems besidomintiems kinu, kino istorija, kino teatrų auditorijos pasikeitimu, multipleksų atsiradimu ir jų įtaka formuojant vartojimo įpročius. / FLUCTUATIONS IN CINEMA ATTENDANCE (EU, 1990 – 2007) Summary Since 1990 cinema attendance began to revive after having declined over a 30-year period. The arrival of American-style multiplexes – new cinemas with eight or more screens demonstrating blockbuster films – had successfully attracted audiences back to the cinema. Since 2001 in terms of the number of cinemas, EU 15 countries cinema market was already described as fundamentally saturated and can no longer be expanded by building new cinemas. The greatest potential lies with new EU countries that untill now have seen less intensive investment. Here cinema markets have low screen densities, which are currently accompanied by low admission – per capita ratios. This paper examines the reasons of fluctuations in cinema attendance and considers the impact of the multiplex development. In terms of practical meaning, this paper should be relevant to cinema business developers and all others being intersted in cinema, cinema history, changes in cinema audiences, rise of multiplex and its impact on consumer habbits.