The Kinematograph Weekly, popularly known as Kine Weekly, was a trade newspaper catering to the British film industry. It was published in Britain between 1889 and 1971.
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Kine Weekly was founded in 1889 as the monthly publication Optical Magic Lantern and Photographic Enlarger. In 1907 it was reamed Kine Weekly, a weekly title containing trade news, advertisements, reviews, exhibition advice, and reports of regional and national meetings of trade organisations such as the Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association, and the Kinema Renters' Society.
Kine Weekly was owned by the periodical publisher Odhams. Towards the latter part of its run it was published by Odhams' subsidiary Longacre Press. This was the name Odhams had given to Hultons - publisher of Picture Post (the magazine which pioneered photojournalism in the UK) and of the famous Eagle comic among other titles - when it took over that company in 1960. In 1970, Odhams itself was taken over by IPC Specialist and Professional Press Ltd. According to the final issue of Kine Weekly (published in 1971) the title was sold to British and American Film Holdings Ltd, which owned the rival film trade paper, Today's Cinema (which had been in existence since 1957, initially as Daily Cinema). Kine Weekly then merged with Today’s Cinema. In September 1975, Today’s Cinema was re-launched as Screen International, which is now owned and published by EMAP.
Kine Weekly is a unique and invaluable record of the development of the British film and television industries, and is widely used by researchers. In particular, the annual polls published in the newspaper provide the most complete record of the British box office available to researchers.
A partial index of the newspaper—covering the period 1955 to the end of the publication in 1971, plus material from the late 1890s, early-1915, 1943 to mid-45 and January to June 1954—has been produced by the British Cinema History Research Project, based at the University of East Anglia, and is available online.
British Cinema History Research Project [1]
List of UK library holdings [2]
Partial index for Kine Weekly [3]