Nearly 500 people stand in single file outside the gates of an abandoned hospital on a cold November night in South Kensington. They wait anxiously in silence, dressed in bathrobes as dark figures with American accents make their way down the line, whispering to each person “The programme on which you are about to enrol is experimental and highly secret. Though certain elements may seem disturbing, the New Wellbeing Foundation has your health and happiness at heart. Tell No One”. To any bystander the scene may look like the initiation into some kind of new-age suicide cult, but to those in the know this is the start of a night of unique experiences at the hands of Secret Cinema. The London based company have been operating in locations all over the city since 2007, holding unique events that fuse interactive theatrics, live musical performances, and cinema into an immersive experience that challenges the banal and clinical setting of the local multiplex. The latest event transported the audience from the bustling streets of London into the haunting setting of Oregon State Hospital and headfirst into the narrative of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman, 1975).
The events have grown from a few hundred people watching Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (2007) underneath London Bridge, to the grandiose proportions of filling Alexandra Palace with 15,000 people over 3 days and turning the massive venue into a buzzing Arabian souk, for a screening of David Lean’s 1962 epic, Lawrence of Arabia. As few details as possible are given to the patrons who pay up to nearly £30 for a ticket, even the film is a secret until the opening credits begin to roll. Clues in the form of music videos and short films are given over Facebook, and dress code and location are emailed a few days before the event begins.
Paying a small fortune to see a film that you may have already seen might seem a bit like swapping your car for some magic beans but Secret Cinema seems to be offering an experience that film lovers have been yearning for. The events offer a way to experience films in an immersive world that reflects the on-screen landscape. Each location is drastically dressed and filled with props that fit with the style of the film and actors playing characters from the film interact with the audience that offer each patron their own unique experience to take away with them.
Whilst the Lawrence of Arabia event caused some ambivalence among attendees over the acoustics in the huge screening room, hour long food queues, and sitting on a concrete floor for three and a half hours, the latest more intimate event seems to have ironed out the kinks. Audience members were invited to wander the creepy corridors of Oregon State Hospital, exploring every room and inspecting every detail of the haunting world. Nurses and orderlies in 1950s dress pace the halls and direct people to prescription rooms and medication stations for ‘liquid sedatives’. An announcement over the tannoy calls for ‘Wake up Time’ and patients begin to stir from beds all over the hospital. The event begins to come to life as actors play out the opening scenes of the film and invite audience members to join in.
Some took part in special treatment therapy and were invited to share their feelings with the actors playing nurses and patients. In other parts of the hospital the characters broke loose and began playing music to the crowds. Characters from the film such as Billy and Martini danced with audience members and a singer serenaded an unsuspecting female patient. The event became a cacophony of images and sounds with scenes from the film being acted out all over the hospital. Before long, Jack Nicholson’s character, McMurphy, was starting fights with orderlies, and patients were being lobotomised. Things were happening simultaneously all over the hospital so that audience members in any part of the building had something new to look at and experience.
After 2 hours of experiencing the sights and sounds of the surreal hospital, the tannoy announced it was relaxation time and every audience and cast member stopped in their tracks and listened as the halls were filled with a thick fog. Audience members had been asked to learn the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ before the event, and as it was played the halls came alive with the voices of hundreds of people singing along to the same beautifully haunting song, before being ushered into 4 separate screening rooms to view the film.
Whilst sitting down for the next 2 hours may seem like it would be an anti climax to the excitement of the evening, as the opening credits rolled and the characters that had been talking to and singing with everyone appeared on screen, the brilliance of the film put into perspective the point of the whole evening. Secret Cinema brings out the best of a film for a community of film lovers which beg for a more complete experience, away from the unimaginative and impersonal setting of your local cinema that churns out the latest Hollywood remakes in so called ‘stunning’ 3D. The events offer an alternative immersive experience that appeals to fans of classic cinema, some of who may have seen the films being shown several times, yet the world that’s created gives new depth to familiar scenes and offers a new universe for first time viewers of the films to experience.
The growth of Secret Cinema and the rise in new ways of experiencing film such as Cineroleum - a student based company which turned a derelict London petrol station into a cinema for a month of screenings this summer - suggest a cinematic revolution may be taking place in response to the disenchantment with Hollywood’s increasingly bland output and the lack of value from nationwide cinemas. With cheaper ways of exhibiting films these days, cinema is in the hands of those that love movies and whilst the motto of Secret Cinema may be ‘Tell No-One’, people are talking and by the looks of it nothing short of a lobotomy is going to keep them quiet.
The next Secret Cinema event is taking place from February 11th 2011. For ticket details go to www.secretcinema.org