TAKE a trip back in time to the heyday of Cinema City at this year's Glasgow Film Festival.

From anecdotes about the lengthy queues just to get into picture halls to the opulent decor and a wealth of movie favourites, 80 years of audience memories have been trawled to produce Jeely Jars and Seeing Stars: Glasgow's Love Affair with the Movies.

The free event is on at the Mitchell Library from February 12 to 28. The centrepiece of the Cinema City strand at this year's GFF, it shines a spotlight on the golden years of movie-going in Glasgow, from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Identical twins John and Peter Douglas, 77, from Dumbarton remember going to the Saturday morning cinema club at the Ascot in Anniesland.

"We joined the queue of children and paid our sixpence to get in," says Peter. "They had community singing, and then we saw a cartoon and the serial."

The brothers swapped Roy Rodgers and Laurel and Hardy for regular cinema screenings after school at Hyndland Senior Secondary when they were in their teens. They took the No. 24 tram to Anniesland Cross and entered a whole new world of feature films.

"You'd go in during the middle of the film and sit through it, and then there would be a second feature film and then the interval," says John.

A newsreel and trailers followed and then the feature started all over again.

"You sat down when it was half-way through and came out at that point. It was a continuous show, it seems crazy today," laughs Peter. "As we went out, there standing in the foyer was the uncle from the Saturday morning who was actually the manager of the cinema, wearing his bow tie and evening suit to welcome patrons coming in. We thought we would love to do that: be a cinema manager."

The boys left school and in 1953 went for interviews at J Arthur Rank organisation's regional office at the New Savoy cinema in Hope Street to get their first step on the ladder to train as projectionists, John stayed there and Peter went to work at the Capital cinema in Ibrox.

At the time it was a recognised trade in Scotland with a five-year apprenticeship, though it was a while before the brothers got their hands on a reel of film.

"When we first started we thought we'd be handing the films and seeing them but we were sweeping the floor and going out to get fish suppers and going to the bookies to put bets on," smiles John. "Then eventually we started handling film and our main job initially was making up the film and rewinding it. A feature film had five or six reels."

By 1960 John got the call to go and work at the Odeon cinema in Renfield Street, where all projectionists wanted to work.

" It was built as a Paramount in the early 1930s, a big 3,000-seater cinema, beautifully equipped, with a large stage, an orchestra pit that went up and down in front of the stage and a cinema organ that not only went up and down but turned around. It was a beautiful place to work," he says.

With the arrival of the 1960s the Odeon became a theatre for live music acts in between cinema screenings, hosting big names from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Ella Fitzgerald, Dusty Springfield and Roy Orbison.

"The first time the Beatles came to the Odeon they didn't top the bill, they finished the first half of the show," says John.

Flora Pagan grew up in Govan across the road from the Elder cinema, spoiled for choice with the Vogue and Plaza in the area among others; she says her family usually went to the nearby Lyceum.

The 84-year-old remembers going to the pictures regularly with her boyfriend Tommy before they were married.

"We had sweetie coupons, rationing was on, and we got three-quarters of a pound of sweeties a month," she remembers.

"So while we were standing in the picture queue at the Lyceum he used to cross the road to the Lyceum cafe and buy me a quarter of Parisian creams. I don't think you get them nowadays.

"While we waited in the queue, Dougie Smith sang outside the picture hall in Govan. He had a lovely voice but unfortunately he didn't have the looks for the stage.

"He sang in Italian, he had a beautiful voice, and I remember he had snuff. He put it on the back of his hand and sniffed it so he always had a brown patch around his nose."

She has fond memories of going to the Grand picture hall in Cowcaddens with her grandfather to see Heidi, and on Saturdays with friends to a local, and then on to the Band of Hope for a cup of tea and a bag of buns with yet another film.

"When I was 10 or 11 my Gran stayed in Cowcaddens and I spent a lot of time there," she says. "There was a wee picture hall off Garscube Road and we used to get thrupence to go there on a Saturday.

"If the film broke down everybody stamped their feet, there was hissing and booing."

Other events related to the exhibition include an Early Cinema Talk on February 21 in the Blythswood Room at the Mitchell Library, and Exploring Glasgow's Cinema History on February 25, looking at the library's unique material on the world of all things film.

The idea of the initiative is to gather the memories of a generation that saw films from the 1930s to the 1960s, says Angela Fussell, Cinema City project manager.

"It was a way of cinema-going that just doesn't exist anymore. Most folk are sitting with a laptop looking at Netflix these days," she adds.

"The themes that have emerged are the shared experience - people would meet up to go to the cinema, family would go together then split up, they'd go and see family films and then go with their friends and see something else. I found people put a lot of emphasis on Pathe news, sometimes they would go along to watch the news because that was how you found out about not only world events but what was happening in the country, especially during the Second World War."

l Jeely Jars and Seeing Stars: Glasgow's Love Affair with the Movies, Mitchell Library, February 12 to 28