Club Ciné Is Making Film Clubs Sexy Again

LONDON — Club Ciné, the by-invitation-only film club founded by casting director Tom Macklin, is expanding its reach and is launching an editorial arm by turning its Instagram page @clubcine.ig into a magazine format filled with articles and interviews with actors, directors and costume designers.

The platform will also introduce a Substack newsletter in early December. 

The film club’s screenings at The Cinema at Selfridges has drawn in a diverse crowd from fashion and entertainment, including Alexander McQueen’s creative director Seán McGirr; English filmmaker Edgar Wright; Dunhill’s creative director Simon Holloway; actors Marisa Abela and Hugh Skinner, and photographer Venetia Scott, who has never missed a screening.

This year the film club has screened “High & Low — John Galliano,” “Anora,” “The Room Next Door,” “MaXXXine,” and more, usually followed by Q&As with directors such as Kevin MacDonald and Ti West.

The Instagram page will be a deeper dive into the lives of the creatives, with weekly posts. 

The first is with film producer Malcolm Washington, who was behind Netflix’s “The Piano Lesson,” followed by Canadian artist and writer Bruce LaBruce and then actor Hari Nef, asking them about their film influences, obsessions and what they’re indulging in right now.

“I was always finding myself going to film festivals or first lit screenings at distributors, but I was always sitting there on my own watching these movies. The movies make you feel something, but you come out and there’s nobody to talk to about it because they’re under embargo and it took out the pleasure of going to the cinema,” said Macklin, who spent 15 years at Hearst booking talent for the covers of Harper’s Bazaar U.K., Esquire U.K. and Elle U.K.

Club Ciné is injecting the fun back into watching films for Macklin and his fellow industry colleagues.

The Cinema at Selfridges was designed by the famous Milanese interior design company Dimore Studio and has a David Lynch meets Wes Anderson interiors feel to it.

On arrivals there are Champagne and cocktails greeting guests and inside the screening rooms, each velvet seat is accompanied with popcorn and a goodie bag from Aesop or Haeckels, as well as a special pamphlet that contains trivia and tidbits from the film.

Before each screening Macklin speaks to the audience about interesting facts about the film being shown to put it in context and plays a quickfire quiz game about the director or actors in the film.

The film club has accidentally catapulted into something bigger than Macklin expected. “I never launched it as a business or to make profit,” he said.

Cutler & Gross was Club Ciné’s brand partner last season and Jimmy Choo is its current partner.

The idea for the film club started in 2018 for Macklin, where he would invite a small group of friends from Hearst to use the screening room at the W Hotel in Piccadilly Circus, which is a few minutes’ walk away from the publisher’s London offices. The film club took a break during COVID-19 and he decided to relaunch it after leaving his editorial job at Hearst.

In the relaunch, art directors Peter Ainsworth and Johanna Bonnevier helped him come up with a logo, which is a coat of arms that features a rooster, a lion and the helmet of a knight. Meanwhile, art director Tristan Bartolini has curated the visuals for the Instagram and Substack pages, with illustrator Richard Kilroy drawing the subjects.

On Nov. 22, Club Ciné will host a screening of “Paris Is Burning” with Aesop to launch the brand’s Gift Kits, which have been inspired by cinema.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Aesop’s senior art director Francesca Davoren-Britton and its global head of visual merchandising and brand environment Shawana Grosvenor.

The appetite for the film club is growing and in December, Club Ciné will host a screening for 80 people for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”