All change at the movies
In the reel old days, you bought a torn-off ticket, purchased a paper carton of popcorn and pulled down your maroon velvet seat to enjoy a night out at the cinema. But now you’re not restricted to a purposebuilt picture house to watch the latest blockbuster. You can sit back and enjoy the silver screen almost anywhere. The Sunborn superyacht and hotel, moored at London’s Royal Victoria Docks, has launched an on-board forty-seater Sunday Movie Club in the bow. An usherette brings beverages and burgers to your seat.
It’s not only up-market interiors that are being transformed into screening rooms. Open-air cinemas are now popping up all over Britain. Whatever the weather, Away Resorts holiday parks offer an ‘outdoor cinema experience’ designed to mimic on land the cheerful and uplifting entertainment provided by a cruise ship on the high seas. Movie-goers sit on hay bales and wrap up in fleece blankets. Fire pits provide warmth and a place to toast the marshmallows. Deep in the Lincolnshire countryside, Kinema in the Woods has been showing flicks since 1922 in a half-timbered Edwardian cricket pavilion, with original tip-up seats. A 1927 Compton Cinema Organ rises from the floor during intermissions.
Even film festivals now reject modern multiplexes, preferring to have a shot at creating their own dream palace. The annual Moonlight Flicks festival is staged in Chester’s Roman Garden against a backdrop of ancient finds, frescoes and carved columns from the Roman gymnasium. Carry on Cleo anyone? www. sunbornlondon.com; www.awayresorts. co.uk; www.thekinemainthewoods.co.uk; www.moonlightflicks.com.
Dea Birkett