Port Talbot Paradiso
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2017
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Actor Michael Sheen explores the history of Port Talbot's Plaza Cinema. A beautiful art-deco building , first opening in 1940, the Plaza was the heart of cinema entertainment for the people of Port Talbot for decades - a place where Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins watched everyone from George Formby to Bogart and Cagney and where, growing up in Port Talbot in the 1970s and 80s, Michael Sheen had his early encounters with the film industry in which he would thrive.
But as well as charting the onward march of the multiplex which lead to the Plaza's eventual demise, and talking to the last projectionist and cinema manager who fought so hard to make it viable, Michael Sheen explores the importance of places like the Plaza to towns and communities all over the UK. Is it possible to turn it around, find a new use or even see crowds return to the elegant interior, or is the Plaza now only a monument to a past life , rich in nostalgia but which can no longer provide what a modern community needs ? Michael also hears from two other Plaza goers and children of Port Talbot - Rob Brydon and the Opera Singer Rebecca Evans.
Producers: Joanne Cayford and Tom Alban
Photographs: Copyright John Crerar.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:42.0 | Hi, I'm Riana Dylan, and welcome to Seriously, where today we're heading to the movies. |
| 0:50.0 | We weren't just watching Hollywood. |
| 0:53.4 | Some of us had made it to Hollywood. |
| 0:55.6 | We're in the town of Port Tolbert in South Wales, |
| 0:58.6 | visiting one particular building. |
| 1:01.2 | There used to be entertainment provided in the interval. |
| 1:04.0 | It wasn't just the asharet coming down with a tray of ice cream. |
| 1:07.0 | Port Tolbert's Plaza, the art deco cinema that for years was the height of entertainment in the town, where young would-be |
| 1:16.0 | actors Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins bought tickets to see George Fawnbee and Humphrey Bogart |
| 1:22.0 | films. You might say the plaza was the birthplace of their |
| 1:26.2 | Hollywood dreams. Today's story is told by Michael Sheen, another Welsh actor whose Hollywood career has its roots in Port |
| 1:35.8 | Talbot. Let's join Michael in the town. |
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