East End Review

Tag: Secret Cinema

  • Secret Cinema defends price hike for The Empire Strikes Back

    Secret Cinema – Empire Strikes Back 620

    Secret Cinema has hit back over the cost of tickets for this summer’s immersive screening of Star Wars: The Emperor Strikes Back.

    Tickets for the sci-fi blockbuster, which will be screened in a secret London location for two months from 4 June, cost £75, compared with £53.50 to see last year’s screening of Back to the Future.

    One Star Wars fan taking to Twitter called the price hike “daylight robbery”, though Secret Cinema’s founder and creative director Fabien Riggall points out that the extra cost is due to the grander-than-ever scale of the project.

    “This is a film that’s loved by millions of people and the scale of what we have to create to fuel that love is of such magnitude that the production costs have gone up and everything’s gone up,” he said.   

    “These things really do cost a lot of money to put on. And also to secure the buildings and the space and the environments that fit the film.

    “What’s been frustrating is that the whole idea of it is that we want to keep it a secret. I find it heartbreaking that I have to explain all of this because it takes a bit of the mystery out, but at the same time I want to be transparent.”

    Secret Cinema has also fended off allegations about the payment of its ensemble cast members, following the discovery of an advert, apparently from 2010, which suggested they were only paid expenses.

    “We have paid our ensemble cast ever since Secret Cinema has started,” said Riggall. “It’s completely inaccurate, and I’ve been trying to locate how that [advert] came about. What we do is highly complicated so for people to say that we don’t pay our staff or pay our actors is … I find it amazing that they would think that.”

    Tickets for Secret Cinema Presents: The Empire Strikes Back are currently on sale, with some of the dates already sold out.

  • Secret Cinema to hold charity screening to protest against The Interview hackers

    Last summer’s secret screening: Back to the Future. Photograph: Al Overdrive

    Secret Cinema is to make a shock comeback this weekend with a one-off charity screening in East London, San Francisco and Rome as a protest against “the attack on freedom of expression” represented by threats against screening political comedy The Interview.

    The simultaneous screenings will take place at 6.30pm GMT on Sunday 21 December, with tickets priced £25 and all proceeds going to free speech charity Article 19.

    The film and East London location are for now under wraps, though organisers have asked filmgoers to wear dark suits and bring a small gift for a stranger.

    With three screenings already confirmed, Secret Cinema is looking for more global partners to join in with the simultaneous screenings. This, they hope, will strengthen the resolve of filmmakers and artists against the threat of censorship, and show solidarity with artists whose freedom of expression is routinely curtailed.

    Secret Cinema’s previous charity screening of Dead Poet’s Society in August 2014 raised over £24,000 for mental health charity Mind.

    Tickets can be purchased here

  • Secret Cinema: Back to the Future review – a party for the fans

    Secret Cinema Presents Back to the Future. Photograph: Al Overdrive
    Secret Cinema Presents Back to the Future. Photograph: Al Overdrive

    Secret Cinema’s Back to the Future has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but now that the production is underway, was it worth the wait?

    Fifty quid is a lot to pay for an evening’s entertainment, but when I heard Secret Cinema was to stage my partner’s favourite film ever I swallowed my reservations and shelled out. And after the debacle of both suspending ticket sales after a booking system crash (that’s a lunch hour I’ll never get back), not to mention a spate of cancelled shows, Secret Cinema’s homage to Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 classic has finally gone ahead. And the good news is: it’s great.

    Arriving at the not-so-secret-location beside the Olympic Stadium in full fancy dress, the ‘residents’ of Hill Valley are treated to a lovingly-recreated film set replete with 1950s-era stores, a high-school dance in full swing, and dozens of actors manfully attempting American accents with varying degrees of success.

    Entering into the spirit of things, we wished away the looming carbuncle that is the ArcelorMittal Orbit and danced around with strangers as 1950s cars circled the venue. The queues for food were eye-watering (a 45 minute wait for a so-so £6 hot-dog was a special kind of hell) but the lines for the rides move more quickly as the evening wore on. Indeed, the best view of the production is to be had from the top of the Ferris wheel, where the scale of the undertaking becomes clear.

    My advice? If you love Back To The Future, and who on earth doesn’t, you’ll love this. The usual East London gripes apply – overpriced drinks and hipsters abound – and the success of the show is almost certainly dependent on good weather. Nor can you move without an opportunity to spend more of your cash – on haircuts, clothes, records, comics and much else. But if you park your gripes at the door (along with your mobile phone) and make sure to turn up on time, there’s plenty to justify the ticket-price and then some.

    A live band introduced the film, which the audience good-naturedly quoted along with as actors played out scenes. Fairground rides, food, drink, shops – the event is billed as an ‘immersive experience’ which is a pretentious way of describing what it is: a party for the fans. And it works, not least because at the heart of the whole evening is a terrific film, one everyone’s seen countless times, a big slice of eighties nostalgia repackaged and sold back to us with cream on top. When the credits rolled, we danced the night away, before we made like a tree – and got outta there.

    For tickets see www.secretcinema.org/tickets