Zinema Christmas Cards 2025

Description

As long as we can remember, Christmas and movies have been inextricably and deeply emotionally linked. In a pre-internet world of three television channels meant that “the Christmas film” was genuinely a big deal in the 70s and 80s. Sure, there was a fair number of deeply unseasonal Christmas Day spectaculars, like in 1974 when The Bridge On The River Kwai was the BBC’s Christmas Day exclusive (despite it being 17 years old, and at the time the most costly TV acquisition ever at £125,000 for five showings), but we were on safer ground in 1978 with Diamonds Are Forever on ITV on Christmas Day, in 1979 with the premiere of Moonraker on Boxing Day and then The Man With The Golden Gun in 1980. Never Say Never Again in 1983 is best left never being seen again. 

A mere eight years after its theatrical release The Empire Strikes Back was on ITV on Christmas Day in 1988 (the Beeb had the premiere of Back To The Future) and Return Of The Jedi came the following year, cementing Christmas as the most wonderful cinematic time of the year. 

Since 2016, in the UK, you can now go to the cinema for real on Christmas Day – a long standing American tradition and now one for many people this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, here at Industria, we have a relatively new annual tradition of our own – our Christmas card boxes. To be fair, this is only the second time we’ve done it, so I’m not sure it counts as either a tradition or an annual occurrence as of yet. In any case, you have before you 12 bespoke cards featuring a collaboration between writers and artists on our team and with our talented friends (welcome this year’s collaborators, Sọpẹ́ Dìrísù and Corin Hardy). 

Each card features a short essay, a poem, or a crossword puzzle, matched with an illustration, a photo, a collage, or even some cross-stitching – each paying homage to a film that we love and which we’re sure you’d enjoy watching this Christmas. We’ve also included an engagement-baiting element this year, with each card featuring a cut-out and keep Christmas tree ornament that you can actually use “IRL”.