Staff Writer Polly Symes reflects on her struggles to find a way into London’s most noticeable cinema, drawing attention to the dangers the BFI IMAX underpass poses for women.
Built in 1999, the BFI IMAX houses the largest cinema screen in the UK, reaching almost the height of five double-decker buses. Largely, it screens the blockbusters: recent showings include ‘Wicked’, ‘Gladiator II’ and ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’. Arguably, it is one of the biggest attractions of the Southbank. As a King’s student, you’ll recognise it as the ginormous, translucent cylindrical structure right at the centre of the roundabout by Waterloo Bridge and the KCL Waterloo Campus.
Unfortunately, my first visit to the BFI IMAX was less than ideal. I had been wanting to secure ‘Wicked’ cinema tickets and I thought, since I’m often walking around here, why don’t I buy them in person? That turned out to be a huge, BFI IMAX screen-sized error.
Could I make my way into the cinema? Absolutely not. There were no clear entrance signs, and there wasn’t a way to reach the centre of the roundabout (warning, don’t try it unless you want to become roadkill). Even if you survive the near-lethal sprint across the roundabout, you are only greeted by green foliage, and no doors. After hazarding said sprint, I was stressed and sweating, thinking: am I so incompetent that I cannot find my way into the cinema with the largest cinema screen in the UK?
So, I gave up and consulted Google: “how do I enter the BFI IMAX?”. Reassuringly, I was not the first to have had this conundrum. Some kind soul had typed out access instructions on the South Bank London website – I needed to find the underpass. If you are a woman and hear the word “underpass”, you know things will only be going downhill. Despite the absence of signage, I managed to locate said entrance. It is more than likely that this lack of clarity has prevented some from visiting the cinema at all.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I was met by the stench of urine and piles of rotting rubbish. It was dark, as there were no lights. I steeled myself: “this is a hugely famous venue; it cannot be that dangerous”. But as a woman alone, it definitely felt dangerous. Beyond the grime, I got the shock of my life when I spotted a man lying amongst it. Any woman will know that the prospect of being alone with a male stranger underground, without any witnesses, is terrifying. Hence, in that viral TikTok video asking women if they would rather be on their own in a forest with a man or a bear, seven out of eight women chose the bear. Whilst it is likely that the man I encountered was homeless, not wanting to be lurking in the BFI underpass (homelessness is a real and significant issue in London), it didn’t make the discovery any less petrifying. Eventually, I reached the cinema. “I survived”, I thought.
The next time I visited the IMAX, I armed myself with a pair of (female) friends. “It’s creepy down there”, I warned them. Still, when we arrived below in the underpass, they couldn’t comprehend how this was the entrance to one of the most famous cinemas in Europe. “It was scary”, one has since commented. The other added: “it just looks really abandoned […] thinking about it gives me chills”.
It was clear that the entrance was a problem. So, I posed the question to the BFI IMAX Vanguard Community – what do you think of it? Public opinion was that the underpass, owned by TfL, was “dangerous” and “a failure of development and urban planning”. One user commented, “If I’m paying £25 to see a movie, the least they can do is clean up the underpass”. Another, having already contacted the BFI IMAX about the issue and received no response, lamented how the BFI IMAX is commonly referred to as “the stinkiest screen in Europe”. They concluded that “as a woman I would not feel safe or even with a young family […] and the BFI refusing to acknowledge or address these issues only makes it worse”.
In the brilliant book ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’, Caroline Criado Perez discusses how urban planning is biased against women, in favour of men. She outlines how architectural design does not account for violence against women because the majority of data focuses on male bodies – hence, women are at the mercy of the gender data gap.
It is clear that the designer of the BFI IMAX (Bryan Avery – a man, coincidentally) did not take the experience of the average woman into consideration.
Will I visit the IMAX again? Probably. It’s a cultural hotspot and somewhat iconic.
Will I feel at all safe in doing so? Absolutely not.
What needs to happen then? Lights, clear signage and a full-on guttering and clean-out of the underpass. Oh, and some security. And that’s the bare minimum.
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