Big screen entertainment is set to mean something different than live sports when a Norwich pub turns into a pop-up old fashion picture palace.
The old brewery room at The Reindeer pub on Dereham Road is set to be transformed into a beautiful art deco-style cinema for two nights by Norwich-based theatre set designer and artist Matt Nunn.
He said: 'I love old films and vintage things. I'm also a freelance set design and theatre artist so I come up with mad ideas every so often and I just thought you know what I want a little cinema, so decided to make one.
'I DJ at the pub quite a lot doing an Americana night and I build a whole set backdrop of a honky-tonk bar for. There is a little back room that used to be the Wolf brewery years ago and I thought that will be ideal for a little cinema.'
Mr Nunn has already built a large purpose built 'art deco' screen, and plans marble columns, a ticket booth and velvet drapes. There will also be live cabaret with the whole evening being hosted by Matt's alter ego Earl Harlem.
'If anyone knows that back room it is just an empty room but when they walk in on these nights it will be totally different,' he said. 'I will be dressed up in my top hat and tails to welcome people in and introduce the films and the live cabaret. It will very much be an experience not just a film in a pub.'
Showing at the 'Grand Little Electric Picture Palace' on March 28 and 29 will be silent feature films Steamboat Bill Jr, the classic Buster Keaton film where the whole of a house facade falls on Buster, and the Charlie Chaplin 1916 short film One AM, the only Chaplin film to feature only him.
Mr Nunn said: 'I wanted to show films that you don't necessarily get to see very often on a bigger screen and I love silent comedies. Hopefully the idea works and in the future we will do more.'
Landlady Lou Wilding, who took over the pub last year having previously run The Wildman on Bedford Street, said: 'It is going to be fantastic. It is totally different; nobody else in the city is doing it. I have seen the screen that he has been building and it really is quite something.'
Tickets are available via We Got Tickets
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