Cinema workers have brought extra drama to the London film festival with protests on the red carpet and the closure of one venue in a battle for better pay.

The Ritzy in Brixton, south London, which was due to host two festival screenings on Friday, was closed as workers went on strike. Protests were also planned outside the premieres of La La Land, a new musical featuring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, at the Odeon in Leicester Square, and The Levelling, a film about the Somerset floods, at Picturehouse Central in Piccadilly.

“There is a real problem with low pay in the film industry and we are going to take that to events where film directors and industry people are so they know those working to show their films are on poverty wages,” said Kelly Rogers, a bartender at the Ritzy and a representative for Bectu, which organised the strike.

The union called on the British Film Institute (BFI), organisers of the London film festival, to sever links with the Ritzy’s owner, Cineworld, until it meets their demands.

Workers at the Hackney Picturehouse in east London, which is also a festival venue, have voted to join the strike protest next weekend while staff at Picturehouse’s Central cinema, on Shaftesbury Avenue, and other venues in Clapham, south London, and Crouch End, north London, have also started to get involved with Bectu.

Workers at the Ritzy say Picturehouse reneged on a promise to work towards payment of the independently calculated London living wage of £9.40 an hour.

Rogers said cinema staff, most of whom are on zero-hours contracts, were paid £9.10 an hour which was not enough to live on in the capital. At the Ritzy, workers get regular shifts although these are not guaranteed by their contracts.

Staff who have worked less than a year do not get company sick pay. Longer term employees only get sick pay if they have been off work for eight days. Rogers said workers wanted sick pay for all workers from the first day they were off ill.

Rogers said: “We have chosen to demand the London living wage because that’s what we need to live in London. £9.10 isn’t enough and many struggle to make their rent. If you are off work for a few days with flu then you can’t make your rent that month and you have to borrow from family and friends.”

Ritzy workers went on strike two years ago in a bid to secure the London living wage but instead won a stepped 26% pay rise, which was less than they demanded.

Protests were called off in 2014 after the company agreed to study its business model and work towards paying the living wage, but Rogers said Picturehouse had not fulfilled its promise and had refused to discuss pay rises at a meeting earlier this year.

The appeal of the boutique chains has been tarnished by rows over the use of zero-hours contracts and low pay. Film fans have criticised poor pay and conditions when they are paying £13 or more to watch a film.

After protests, the Curzon chain agreed to pay the living wage two years ago. The Everyman chain recently pledged to move hundreds of staff off zero-hours contracts by the end of next year, although it does not pay the living wage.

The strike has enjoyed high-profile support, including from the Brixton-based writer Will Self, who in 2014 said he would boycott Picturehouse Cinemas over the dispute. Last month, at the UK premiere of his new film, I, Daniel Blake, in Liverpool, director Ken Loach called the strikers heroic.

“Picturehouse is owned by Cineworld which is a big multinational corporation,” he said. “They make fortunes. The idea that they pay starvation wages because they can get people who are desperate for work is absolutely shocking. Victory to the Ritzy strikers.”

A spokesperson for Picturehouse Cinemas said: “A three-year agreement with Bectu signed in July 2014 set staff pay rates at the Ritzy, not including benefits, at £9.10 from 2 September 2016 after three phased increases. We are therefore disappointed by the decision of a minority of staff at the Ritzy who voted for strike action on Friday 7 October.

“Our staff are hugely important to us, we pay fair wages and have a wide range of benefits within a good working environment. Increases in pay for front of house people in Picturehouse Cinemas have far outstripped inflation over the last three years.”