Obituary: Peter Howden, luminary of independent cinema, dies aged 80
Peter Howden admires a picture of Buster Keaton in Bologna. Photograph: Wallace Kwong
Rio Cinema legend Peter Howden has passed away at the age of 80 following a brief illness, the Dalston picture-house has announced.
Howden was a trailblazer on London’s independent film scene, and spent the past 27 years working at the Rio, first as chief projectionist and later as its programmer.
Announcing his death last week, the cinema’s team said Howden’s “unparalleled instinct for what the Rio audience wanted kept our unique cinema going through thick and thin”.
“We have been honoured to call him a colleague and a friend, and will miss his wry sense of humour and kindness,” they added.
The news drew tributes from across the independent film community.
Peccadillo Pictures, a distributor specialising in LGBT+ arthouse cinema, described Howden as “one of the unsung heroes without who championed films outside of the mainstream and made them accessible to audiences”.
The Rio’s readograph for Howden. Photograph: Zain Gibson
Howden’s Rio colleague, Rosie Greatorex, wrote on the day his death was made public: “It was a privilege to do Peter’s holdovers today.
“Before Christmas he was travelling for two-and-a-half weeks on, as he put it, ‘my tour of Asian trouble spots’, on holiday with his partner and he still clocked in, whatever time zone he was in, to do the holds.”
Holdovers are films that have done well enough to warrant additional screenings.
Greatorex added: “Peter had been known to do the holdovers, seriously ill, from a hospital bed. He was of the old school. Gruff, but privately very kind. And very funny.”
She added: “He used to come back from Bologna Cinema Ritrovato in such a good mood, it was like he was high for a week.
“Recently, he described to me how to tell just from the sound when something was about to go wrong with a 35mm print.
“We will miss you so much, Peter. I will only ever be doing your holdovers.”
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Howden was born in York at the end of the Second World War to a stay-at-home mother and factory worker father.
As a child, he would often visit the local cinema with his father, and would occasionally bunk off Sunday school to go to the pictures.
It was the beginning of a life-long obsession with film that grew during his university days at Sussex in the 1960s.
While a member of the student film society, Howden acquired his first projector, a silent Super 8, and soon after bought a 16mm version with sound.
After arriving in London during the ‘Swinging Sixties’, he began a career that went on to span nearly six decades at left-wing arthouse distributor Contemporary Films.
He also joined a travelling film collective, which operated against the backdrop of student protests in Britain, the Vietnam War, and French political unrest known as ‘May ’68’. Howden would screen newsreels and documentaries at public meetings and festivals, eventually securing a regular slot at Camden’s Roundhouse.
The 1970s saw Howden emerge as a programmer of repertory cinema – films that are past their theatrical release.
Howden (right) with film critic Geoff Andrew at the Electric.
After screening Eisenstein’s 1925 classic, Battleship Potemkin, at the then Imperial Cinema in Notting Hill, Howden went on to become the venue’s manager as it transformed into the legendary Electric Cinema Club, which he later described as “the last of the great ’70s fleapits”.
It was there that Howden developed a template for independent cinema, blending double- and triple-bills with midnight screenings and Q&As, pouring any profits into restoring the building. His work became a blueprint for a generation of programmers.
In 1980, Howden took his strategy to the Everyman in Hampstead, and his years there cemented its reputation as the capital’s leading spot for arthouse films.
During that time, he established the Roxie in Soho, turning it into London’s first serious gay cinema.
It wasn’t until 1998 that Howden brought his idiosyncratic vision to Hackney, joining the Rio at a watershed moment in the cinema’s history, when it was awarded a grant to refurbish the art deco features of its Grade II-listed building.
Ten years later, the Rio triumphed at the well-regarded Screen Awards, taking home prizes for ‘Independent Cinema of the Year’ and ‘Marketing Initiative of the Year’ – the latter for successfully attracting young people back to the cinema.
A modest Howden would have taken little credit, but his industry know-how and ability to spot a gem of a film contributed hugely to the Rio’s achievements.
Howden is survived by his long-term partner, Wallace Kwong.
Peter Howden, film programmer and independent cinema pioneer, 27 March 1945 – 18 January 2026.