Secret Cinema
of murder. We did it in some tunnels beneath London Bridge, filled with ramps and halfpipes, and the audience became part of the skateboard community in this hideout, with staged police investigations.” With each year, the events grew in scale and ingenuity: Alien, Lawrence of Arabia, Ghostbusters. Word-of-mouth built hype, but attendees kept the secret. “I think there’s a real desire to escape the looped existence we have, where everything is revealed and predictable, and everyone knows where everyone is on social media,” says Riggall. “In a world addicted to information, that idea of secrecy is critical, as is a physical, social thing you have to invest in – one you can’t just click and download.” Getting the audience invested has become a science for Secret Cinema. “Lawrence Of Arabia [2010] was the first time the audience was really asked to participate,” says Kulkarni. “At Alexandra Palace, we made a huge souk [marketplace]. They had to bring things to barter with, and exchanges were happening on the Tube before they arrived. We had Bedouin tents, and camels and horses wandering out of Ally Pally.” This attention to detail is even brought to smaller events. “Secret Cinema X is an underground format where we show films that haven’t been released,” says Moccia. “In 2017, we did a ‘Tell No One’ production, where we don’t tell people what they’re going to see.” It was The Handmaiden by Korean director Park Chan-wook. “The performance was done with silhouettes and you couldn’t speak throughout the night. Walking into a room with 1,000-plus people, all completely silent. And at the bar you had to order on a piece of paper. It was beautiful.”
Moulin Rouge, Printworks London (2017) "The cast and team were like family, much like the Moulin Rouge in 1900," says Moccia. "During the run, the Manchester bombings and the Westminster terror attack happened. We got the audience to sing along to The Show Must Go On. I'm tearing up as I speak about it. It was a really moving moment."
SECRET CINEMA/LUKE DYSON/FRASER GILLESPIE
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n 2014, Secret Cinema delivered its most ambitious project to date: Back To The Future – a recreation of Hill Valley near London’s Olympic Village. “People could write letters to each other and postal workers would deliver them within the venue,” says Kulkarni. “Each house had a telephone you could call the other houses with.” The sheer scale proved too staggering; the show wasn’t ready in time for launch. “It was devastating not to be able to open on that first night,” recalls Moccia. “But it’s a learning process.” The show finally opened to rave
“You get to a point where the audience are the performers” THE RED BULLETIN
The Handmaiden, Troxy (2017) "We got the venue at 5am and had to produce the show that night," recalls Bennett. "Following the film's repressiveuncle narrative that no one can talk in his house, the audience took a vow of silence. They loved it."
reviews, but nature almost intervened. At 11pm one night, a surprise rainstorm struck. “Every costume was soaked,” say Kulkarni. “We had to find a way to clean and dry 600 costumes in 12 hours. We hot-boxed an entire cabin and put everything in it.” If Back To The Future was a lesson in untempered ambition, it didn’t shown; the next year, Secret Cinema took it up another notch with The Empire Strikes Back. “It took a year of talking to eight stakeholders, from Lucasfilm to Bad Robot to Disney to Fox,” says Riggall. “[Lucasfilm president] Kathy Kennedy supported us. As exec producer on Back to the Future, she was impressed with what we did there. But to give us the rights to do that movie in the year they were releasing The Force Awakens – a $2 billion franchise – was extraordinary. Then, to find an old newspaper factory to build Star Wars in… that was an insane ambition.” “It was an old printing press not fit for audience members,” says Moccia of the building that is now the nightclub Printworks London. “We transformed it and put in three productions: The Empire Strikes Back, Dr Strangelove and 28 Days Later.” “I wanted to build a gigantic Secret Cinema that could stay there for ever,” says Riggall. “We put a lot of work into it, invested a great deal, but I know the guys who set up Printworks, and good on them.” He sees Secret Cinema’s contribution to the buildings it inhabits as a positive. “So many are empty, waiting years for planning permission. Developers are opening their eyes to what we do. We can create this ‘meanwhile use’, filling them with happy people experiencing something. I like to think that in the depths of the night, as people are dancing to some 49
