YORK's silver-screen past will be the subject of an illustrated talk on Sunday morning - timely in a week when the National Railway Museum's North Yard made its debut as a drive-in movie venue.

Film archivist Tim Addyman and City Screen marketing manager Dave Taylor will discuss The History Of Cinema In York at City Screen from 10am to 12 noon.

The event ties in with the Silver Screen Week at Fairfax House in Castlegate, once the home of St George’s Hall picture house, and will feature memories, images and memorabilia from all 11 cinema buildings in York, including The Regal in Piccadilly, The Grand in Clarence Street, the Electric Scala in Fossgate and, of course, St George’s.

Tim’s passion for York cinemas – he went on to take a prominent role in the Save The Odeon campaign – began with a school project in his sixth-form days at Easingwold Comprehensive. “As part of my first-year studies we had to do a social history project, a Certificate of Pre-vocational Education as I recall, and because I was already interested in the cinema history of York, it was an ideal chance to pick up on that,” he recalls.

“I then approached City Screen when they were about to open in 2001 and said, ‘Would you be interested in showing a record of York’s cinemas on your walls?’, and so I put the boards together for them that are still on show.”

When City Screen and Fairfax House joined together to prepare this weekend’s talk, Dave met with initial frustration in his search to track down the elusive designer of those nostalgic boards. “No-one at City Screen could remember anything about who did them, or at least only vaguely!” he says.

Nevertheless, Dave did eventually make contact with Tim, who now works at Aviva, and by the wonders of Google and a website address for the Odeon campaign, emails were exchanged and Sunday’s talk was set in motion.

“We met and had a discussion about what we could do for the talk: Tim has a massive archive of photographs, adverts and reminiscences of people who worked in the cinemas or used to go to the old cinemas, and he’s even collected some artefacts, some fascinating bits of ephemera, from cinemas that were ripped down,” says Dave Alas, the Rialto organ is not among the ephemera. “It cost £4,000 in 1934-35 but when the Rialto became a bingo hall at the beginning of the Sixties it was sold to an organ enthusiast in Bradford for only £80, and as far as I’m aware, it no longer exists. Apparently it was broken up,” laments Tim.

The Rialto organ may have gone, but much to Tim’s joy, the 1930s’ building of the York Odeon in Blossom Street has not been consigned to history, thanks to its acquisition and re-opening by Reel Cinemas in June.

“We’re exceedingly lucky because usually, when someone gives up on a site, it’s very rare that someone else comes in to re-open it, but as well as building new cinemas, Kalaish Suri and Reel Cinemas do seem to have a real passion for old cinemas, like restoring the art-deco cinema in Loughborough,” he says.

Kalaish Suri’s refurbishment and revival of the Odeon building is one of the reasons for Tim and Dave wishing to update the historical cinema boards. “I have this other hat as a heritage champion for York, preserving the city’s architectural history, and it would be great to update the boards in a presentational way,” says Dave, who is also the Green Party councillor for Fishergate.

“We thought we would try to make the update a two-way process, so we’d like people to come to Sunday’s talk to tell us their reminiscences too – and Tim would like to garner some new stories for his ever-expanding archive.”

For a city of its size and population, York had a remarkably high number of cinemas in the silver screen’s heyday, and now City Screen, Vue Cinemas and Reel Cinemas continue to move with the times. “But it’s not an area of York’s history that is talked about a lot,” says Tim. “There hadn’t been a book on the subject until two or three years ago when cinema and theatre historian Mervyn Gould wrote Cinemas Of York for the Mercia Cinema Society, a study group for cinema architecture.”

Putting you on the spot Tim, will you write your own book, having filled two garages with your “architectural scavenging”? “It would be nice…” he says, without committing himself to the project.

“I think Tim has enough for a book, enough textual material as well as imagery,” says a cajoling Dave. “Who knows, some of the reminiscences that emerge at the talk on Sunday may even end up in his book!”

• Tickets for Sunday’s event are still available at £12.50, including coffee and cake before the event, on 01904 655543.