Qualla: Glasgow Film Theatre

Glasgow Film Theatre: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bewahrerderwerte, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1939, Glaswegians went to the pictures 51 times a year. The rest of Scotland managed 35 visits. England averaged 21. Glasgow had 114 cinemas with over 175,000 seats between them, and on the night of 18 May that year a new one opened on Rose Street: a windowless geometric block clad in Ayrshire brick and Swedish granite, with a globe over the stalls entrance and a single auditorium for 850 people. The opening screening was Julien Duvivier's French drama Un Carnet de Bal. The Cosmo was Scotland's first arts cinema, only the second purpose-built arthouse in Britain after the Curzon Mayfair in London, and the last cinema built in Glasgow before the war shut the country down.

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Image: Bewahrerderwerte | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glasgow Film Theatre: The Singleton Vision

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hwyndham, CC0. The Cosmo was the project of George Singleton, a cinema owner who already ran a chain of elegant Art Deco picture houses across the west of Scotland designed for him by the architect James McKissack. Singleton was not just a businessman. He would go on to co-found the Citizens Th...

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Image: Hwyndham | CC0

Glasgow Film Theatre: A Building of Globes and Granite

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vysotsky, CC BY-SA 4.0. Singleton hired McKissack and his partner WJ Anderson II to design the cinema. They drew inspiration from the Dutch modernist Willem Marinus Dudok, and gave the Cosmo a clean geometric façade that turned its back on the street. Ayrshire brick was finished with faience cornices an...

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Image: Vysotsky | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glasgow Film Theatre: Cosmopolitan Even in Wartime

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joedkins, CC BY-SA 3.0. Programming was deliberate from the start. Charles Oakley pre-read the international film catalogues to help Singleton pick the season. The summer of 1939 brought Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion and Jacques Feyder's La Kermesse Heroique. War cut the supply of continental films, ...

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Image: Joedkins | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glasgow Film Theatre: Becoming the GFT

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tbatb, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the early 1970s the Cosmo could no longer support itself in its original form. On 21 April 1973 the building was sold to the Scottish Film Council. It reopened the following year as the Glasgow Film Theatre, with the old auditorium divided in two: a 404-seat cinema in the form...

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Image: Tbatb | CC BY-SA 4.0