The Victorian era saw a burst of activity in Brighton and Hove by several pioneers of the fledgling film industry who were eager to push forward the boundaries of this new art form. In fact, some of these men are credited with inventing techniques that to this day are an integral part of the language of filmmaking.

George Albert Smith was one of the pioneers of Victorian cinema. He leased St Ann’s Well Gardens in 1892, where he developed the pleasure gardens to include such novelties as a fortune teller and a hermit living in a cave…In 1897 he opened a film laboratory in the garden’s pump house and acquired his first camera, and by the end of the year he had already made thirty-one films.

On your way to New Venture Theatre, Look out for 40b York Road, which was the site of Brighton Unity Theatre: a socialist, anti fascist Workers Theatre Movement which opened in 1936 with J B Priestly’s They Came To A City.

When you reach the bottom of York Road, look across to the corner of Western Rd and Little Western St—this was the site of the Embassy Cinema, at 1 Western Road, which operated from 1912 as the Hove Cinematograph Theatre, then the Tivoli Cinema, and finally the Embassy Cinema from 1948 until its closure in 1981.