The Way We Live (U) + intro (The Box, Super Saturday)

Plymouth Arts Cinema is screening The Way We Live on Saturday 8 November, as part of Super Saturday. It's a documentary-drama from 1946, introduced by The Box, and it's a piece of Plymouth's own history. 2026 marks 80 years since its release, so it's a good time to see it back on the big screen.

Directed by Jill Craigie and running 64 minutes, The Way We Live follows the fictional Copperwheat family through the realities of wartime loss, overcrowded housing and hopes for a better future. It's a pioneering mix of documentary and drama, and it's very much a local production: Craigie used 3,000 Plymouthian extras, so the faces on screen were the people living in the city at the time. Much of Plymouth still lay in ruins after the Blitz when it was filmed, and the film looks at the ambitious plans to build a new, modern city from those ruins.

Craigie put local people at the heart of the story, and she made sure women and families were represented in the debates about housing and reconstruction. It wasn't just a record of the damage; it was a look at the arguments over how the city should be rebuilt. Two decades later, the film is regarded as an important record of Plymouth's rebuilding after the Second World War, and seeing it now, 80 years on, puts the whole process in a different light.

It's showing at Plymouth Arts Cinema on Tavistock Place, PL4 8AT, with an introduction by The Box to set the scene before the film starts. All tickets are £4.50.