Secret Cinema Back to the Future, Printworks London (2014) "<strong>The</strong>re was a piece in the Evening Standard saying we’d affected the way people dressed that summer, that women were wearing '50s dresses," says Kulkarni. "It may be just a coincidence or something subliminal. It's extraordinary to think a cultural event can influence what people wear." DJ’s set, they go, ‘Shit, wasn’t this where the X-wing flew over my head?’” “<strong>The</strong> X-wing was definitely a challenge,” says Moccia of the full-size prop that enacted the finale of Star Wars before the celluloid sequel rolled. “It was built from MDF and rigged to an automation system, with projection mapping to look as if it was flying through space. Luke Skywalker was in it throughout. One time, the automation system failed and he got stuck up there for about an hour.” “<strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back was the zenith,” says Matt Bennett, a DJ who joined to head up the music department. “I just needed a change,” he says. That’s what he got. “I was putting on club nights for 1,000 people in Glasgow, and there are more than 400 people working on Star Wars. <strong>The</strong> production company, Wonder Works, did the [London 2012] Olympics Romeo + Juliet, Gunnersbury Park (2018) Tied to the theme of youth violence, the show worked with the charity MAC-UK. "We got Loki, a political rapper, to come and work on the project and raise money and awareness on knife crime," says Bennett. opening and closing ceremonies. I had three months to figure out the music showcase. It was seat-of-the-pants stuff.” Bennett’s initiation was made tougher by a new experiment: alongside the four stages at Printworks was a warm-up gig at an undisclosed location. “It was the little secret behind the big secret. We had all the bands from the main site and some DJs – everyone learnt to play the cantina band song.” Actors mingling with the crowd added a new layer of immersion. “Fabien wanted to open up allnight parties in the style of [Berlin nightclub] Berghain. Thankfully we never got to that stage, because we were consumed by delivering 100 nights of Star Wars to 100,000 people. After the runaway success of <strong>The</strong> Empire Strikes Back, the window of possibility was thrown wide open. For last year’s Blade Runner that included building a future Los Angeles with an indoor rain system for 86 nights. “We had a massive pool under the floor connected to a closed loop system that pumped water up to a rain rig on the ceiling,” says Moccia. “We had to clean the pool daily, because people dropped chips in it. “But to see that hero moment, with everybody opening their umbrellas, drenched in neon light – it was like being in Shibuya on a rainy night.” Every member of Secret Cinema has their favourite moment. For Bennett, it might have been DJing in that acid rain at Blade Runner. “It felt important, but it was just playing techno to people who were totally wet and having the time of their lives.” Instead, he has another: “In 2015, we went to the Calais refugee camp. It was the week that small boy [Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi] washed up dead on the shore [in Turkey]. Fabien insisted we stage a cultural protest against the treatment of the people at the camp. We took Afrikan Boy, a Nigerian-born London rapper who sings about global politics and immigration, and set up a pop-up cinema screen showing a Bollywood film to all the families in the camp. “<strong>The</strong>re were thousands of people who had no home and didn’t think they had a future. <strong>The</strong>y weren’t sitting eating popcorn. It was a very immediate moment of having an impact on people’s lives who maybe really needed to watch a film. <strong>The</strong> baddies got booed, the girls got cheered. We raised money afterwards to keep the project going, then the political landscape changed when people were killed in Paris and Manchester. But it reflects Secret Cinema’s ethos of getting up and doing stuff, and credit to Fabien for essentially risking his brand with a very divisive political posture.” Raising awareness for social issues is perhaps Secret Cinema’s most hidden quality. SECRET CINEMA/CAMILLA GREENWELL, © 1996 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 50 THE RED BULLETIN
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