Secret Cinema as sandbox

Encyclopaedic in its approach, this chapter traces the history of SC through its first six years and forty-five productions from 2006 to 2012. We describe a highly experimental and exploratory period in which different approaches, working practices and collaborations are tested, which build on the key historical antecedents of itinerant cinema, festival and fairground. We show how a particular format begins to emerge as a result of an iterative and experimental process. The chapter presents the key transitional periods which we argue are defined by a number of binary tensions. We have identified these as: Festivals to Financing (2006–2009) where we see the introduction of corporate sponsorship; Ephemerality to Replicability (2009–2010) where there is a move away from one-off screenings; Movements to Markets (2011) where narratives of resistance and disruption are introduced through the creation of parallel, online, fictional worlds to augment engagement with the event, but which also act as key marketing and promotional tools; and Spatialisation to Stratification (2012–2013) where the combined use of institutionalised spaces and narratives exerts control over audiences, while delivering highly stratified experiences bound up in class-based ideologies – richly epitomised by the final SC production of this period – The Shawshank Redemption.