Rio Cinema

Rio Cinema 📽️ Your Local Not-For-Profit Community Cinema Independent cinema and community centre in Dalston, East London

24/08/2026

PINK PALACE: FASSBINDER – FOX AND HIS FRIENDS
Showing on Thursday 3 September 19:30

Pink Palace (***rfilmclub) presents this gritty look at the seduction of a working class gay man by the bourgeois materialistic middle classes of 1970’s West Germany.

Fox and His Friends is among the director’s most personal works and the first to tackle homos*xuality in a direct manner. Fassbinder himself plays Fox, a sweet but naive working class man and former circus performer whose new relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen, he discovers, is based wholly on his unexpected lottery win. When the money runs out, so does any affection, with tragic consequences.
Pink Palace is a super low fi highly relaxed weekly q***r film club that takes place in the basement bar, its a safe space so come along and catch some q***r film and pop culture history, each week the film is introduced by curator Andrew Woodyatt, feel free to stay and chat afterwards, participation is encouraged!

Get your tickets via our website now 🎟️

Happy heavenly birthday to River Phoenix who would have turned 56 today ❤️
23/08/2026

Happy heavenly birthday to River Phoenix who would have turned 56 today ❤️

22/08/2026

PINK PALACE 4TH BIRTHDAY: THE BIRDCAGE (+ DISCUSSION AND PARTY)
Showing on Thursday 10 September 20:30

Come and join us for a cosy intro chat charting the history of the UK’s only weekly q***r film club, the events, the premieres, the guests, the wonderful highs and (very) occasional lows over the past four years. Founder and curator Andrew Woodyatt will be in conversation with Darren Jones (BFI FLARE) in an illustrated fun chat about the joys and challenges of programming LGBTQI+ films, and a look at the RIO’s pioneering q***r film content since 76 including the UK’s first Pride Film Festival in 1980. 

Then we get to see The Birdcage up on the big screen, easily the most requested film at Pink Palace (***rfilmclub)

Then stay for a party in the RIO lobby with DJ’s, supporting zine and more! 

A dazzling remake of the iconic French gay farce La Cage Aux Folles, arguably a case where the remake is even better than the original !, married to a perfect cast, brilliant performances, a razor sharp script by Elaine may, and riotously funny and uber camp direction from Mike Nichols.   

“It’s hard to resist the flamboyant opening of The Birdcage. As the camera swoops into a gaudy Miami nightclub and focuses on a collection of drag queens performing to the iconic Sister Sledge song We Are Family, it becomes clear that Mike Nichols’ 1996 film is both a q***r sanctuary and a comedic haven… But within the context of mid-1990s Hollywood, the film was also a radical outlier that held particular significance for the LGBTQ+ community… it empowers its gay characters: they are in control of the reality into which the in-laws enter, and Armand and Albert are never characters that are laughed at, only with.” 
BBC - The Birdcage at 25: a gay comedy that broke boundaries.   

The Birdcage opened at the RIO on Friday May 10 1996, as part of the regular RIO Out At The Pictures programme strand that ran in the mid to late 90’s, and as a warm up for the Pride 96 film festival run by the RIO and Centerprise.

Get your tickets via our website now 🎟️

21/08/2026

TEENAGE S*X AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA
NOW PLAYING

August After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original’s star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.

Get your tickets now via our website 🎟️

The Fighting Spirit Film Festival joins us at the Rio Cinema from 4 - 6 September for a three-day celebration of martial...
21/08/2026

The Fighting Spirit Film Festival joins us at the Rio Cinema from 4 - 6 September for a three-day celebration of martial arts and action cinema!

The programme features international shorts and feature films, live martial arts demonstrations, filmmaker Q&As and special events (including a free panel discussion exploring the Rio’s own archive and history of screening martial arts films.)

You don’t want to miss it!
Get your tickets via our website now🎟️

20/08/2026

STOP! THAT! TRAIN!
Showing from Friday 21 August

From the producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the director of Hairspray comes the silliest, stupidest, and most chaotically funny comedy of the year. Inspired by classic spoofs like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, STOP! THAT! TRAIN! follows a catastrophic “Stormaganza” as it threatens to derail a runaway high-speed Glamazonian Express train. A plucky duo of train stewardesses from coach must join forces with President Gagwell, played by RuPaul, to save the day.

Get your tickets via our website now🎟️

19/08/2026

Margeaux Labat (.mp3) Presents THE WATERMELON WOMAN on Wednesday 9 September 20:30 as part of

Humorous, heartfelt and angry in equal measure, The Watermelon Woman was the first narrative feature film to be directed by an openly gay Black woman, and one of the foundational works of the New Q***r Cinema.

As part of our ongoing Rio Forever celebrations, we’re proud to screen it with an in-person introduction by music journalist, NTS radio star and fan of the film, Margeaux Labat.

Written by, directed by and starring documentarian and academic Cheryl Dunye, the film uses the time-honoured template of the small-scale indie romcom to explore the erasure of Black women in early Hollywood cinema, as video store employee Cheryl begins researching the life and work of mysterious Black actress Fae Richards, only to discover that her own life and that of this largely forgotten bit-part player have unexpected parallels.

Sparking a political firestorm on first release in 1996, when its explicit s*x scenes led reactionary conservative politicians to angrily question the grants dealt out by America’s NEA, or National Endowment for the Arts, the film still feels challenging three decades later. 

Get your tickets via our website now 🎟️

PINK PALACE 4TH BIRTHDAY: THE BIRDCAGE (+ DISCUSSION AND PARTY)Showing on Thursday 10 September 20:30 Come and join us f...
18/08/2026

PINK PALACE 4TH BIRTHDAY: THE BIRDCAGE (+ DISCUSSION AND PARTY)
Showing on Thursday 10 September 20:30

Come and join us for a cosy intro chat charting the history of the UK’s only weekly q***r film club, the events, the premieres, the guests, the wonderful highs and (very) occasional lows over the past four years. Founder and curator Andrew Woodyatt will be in conversation with Darren Jones (BFI FLARE) in an illustrated fun chat about the joys and challenges of programming LGBTQI+ films, and a look at the RIO’s pioneering q***r film content since 76 including the UK’s first Pride Film Festival in 1980. 

Then we get to see The Birdcage up on the big screen, easily the most requested film at Pink Palace (PinkPalaceQ***rFilmClub)

Then stay for a party in the RIO lobby with DJ’s, supporting zine and more! 

A dazzling remake of the iconic French gay farce La Cage Aux Folles, arguably a case where the remake is even better than the original !, married to a perfect cast, brilliant performances, a razor sharp script by Elaine may, and riotously funny and uber camp direction from Mike Nichols.   

“It’s hard to resist the flamboyant opening of The Birdcage. As the camera swoops into a gaudy Miami nightclub and focuses on a collection of drag queens performing to the iconic Sister Sledge song We Are Family, it becomes clear that Mike Nichols’ 1996 film is both a q***r sanctuary and a comedic haven… But within the context of mid-1990s Hollywood, the film was also a radical outlier that held particular significance for the LGBTQ+ community… it empowers its gay characters: they are in control of the reality into which the in-laws enter, and Armand and Albert are never characters that are laughed at, only with.” 
BBC - The Birdcage at 25: a gay comedy that broke boundaries.   

The Birdcage opened at the RIO on Friday May 10 1996, as part of the regular RIO Out At The Pictures programme strand that ran in the mid to late 90’s, and as a warm up for the Pride 96 film festival run by the RIO and Centerprise.

Get your tickets via our website now 🎟️

17/08/2026

LADY Showing from Saturday 22 August

Lady is an off-beat comedy about a lonely, narcissistic aristocrat who dupes a struggling, opportunistic director into filming her every move. But her obsession with the spotlight takes a surreal turn when she starts becoming… invisible. Blending mockumentary and magical realism, Lady satirises our desperate need to feel seen.

Get your tickets via our website now 🎟️

Address

107 Kingsland High Street
London
E82PB

Opening Hours

Monday 11am - 12am
Tuesday 5:30pm - 12am
Wednesday 5:30pm - 12am
Thursday 5:30pm - 12am
Friday 5:15pm - 12am
Saturday 1:30pm - 12am
Sunday 1pm - 12am

Telephone

02072419410

Website

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