One of my earliest memories is seeing The Lion King
and being absolutely traumatised
when Mufasa - spoiler alert - gets killed by the stampede.
That had a massive profound effect on me
and showed me how much a 2D cinema screen
can make you feel so much.
We did a screening of Get Out in 2017.
At the end of the film
there was this massive, rapturous applause
in the cinema.
It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
That is such a special and unique thing
that only exists in cinemas.
I think that human beings are supposed to go to cinema.
I think it's intrinsic to who we are.
It's something about coming together.
Be it around a fire or in front of a cinema screen
is just fundamental to what it means to be human.
In the very earliest days of cinema
you would go to see films in really quite strange spaces.
The archways under railway stations
in markets, in shops, often at fairgrounds.
So it was quite a transient thing.
So in the 1920s
the numbers really start to go up.
There's heating, comfortable seats
You start to buy ice cream.
Suddenly, this is quite a nice thing to go and do.
People would risk life and limb to go and see films.
So you would have
air raid sirens going off
fire wardens kind of announcing bombs coming
and people would still sit in the cinema.
I think stories
are one of the things that makes us
fundamentally human.
And as a neuroscientist
I've always been interested in
how people experience stories.
How do these stories affect people
when they're in audiences?
We had people in the cinema watching this film.
Then we also had people in my lab at UCL
watching the film by themselves.
What we found is that
when you're watching with an audience
there's much stronger emotional reactions
than when you're watching it alone.
When Jasmine and Aladdin kiss for the first time
that is the spike
in electrodermal activity in the signal
and electrodermal activity
is the strongest indicator of emotional engagement.
I went to a screening of Singin’ in the Rain
and I remember
sitting, going into that screening
feeling really quite miserable.
And the film came on. And by halfway through
I just felt absolutely elevated and so lifted out of myself.
And it's that feeling
and it's that moment that I always come back to.
Most of the time when you leave the cinema
I feel, you know
changed in a way, whether it's
challenged or whether I feel empowered
or whether I feel kind of like energised.
There's a feeling that it evokes.
You're scrolling through your phone
you've got the radio, you've got the TV.
You're constantly being shouted at by different voices
and unless you can immerse yourself in that one story
you're not going to be transported in the way that
cinema intends to transport you.
The lights go out, my phone's off
and I'm just so focused on what I'm watching.
We live in quite an individualistic culture
and I think whenever we can come together,
whether it's a music concert, whether it's a boxing match
or whatever
there’s almost this
ability to move as one, to think as one, to feel as one.
One of the great powers of cinema
is that it's the means by which we tell each other
about ourselves
and it's a means by which we develop our empathy muscle
which is like crucial to becoming better people
and making the world a better place.
I remember seeing Black Panther
and just the energy in there.
You're in a room full of strangers
but all of you are going through
the exact same experience
at the same time.
And I think there’s a kind of sacred bond there.
Cinemas haven't always been
totally accessible to everyone.
And that's a really important thing for us
to think about in terms of people's wellbeing.
Decades ago
cinemas were not necessarily wheelchair accessible.
Now there are laws in place
that mean they certainly should be.
Covid really reminded us
of how much we need each other
of how much we are social animals
and of how it is different
watching a film on your own, on your laptop
than going to the cinema and watching it in darkness
surrounded by strangers
who are miraculously experiencing the same
thing as you at the same time.
I suppose that at some point they might be superseded by
an even cooler way to give us a story
3D holograms or something.
But the idea that we would stop getting together
as audiences to watch a story as a group
I can't see that ever disappearing
as long as there are humans.
Cinema is the place where humans go
to be reminded of what it is to be human.