Secret Cinema

This weekend we went to something called Secret Cinema - it was such a cool experience and I've never done anything like it!  Here's the deal - you buy (limited and soon sold out) tickets ahead of time to the event without knowing where it will be or what movie.  The week before you get an email telling you where the secret meeting location is and what the dress is.  Everyone dresses up to suit the theme of the movie, so that's your first clue as to what the movie is!  And, there are different dress assignments for different groups.  This was ours:

And here were the other two:

Here's what we came up with!

Most of my outfit I already had - the skirt, the heels, the pantyhose (with the black seam down the back), and the fur.  The fur collar and the pearls were my grandmother's, so they were authentic!  I bought the hat and blouse at a local department store (the hat was surprisingly easy to find, the Brits love their fancy hats!), and the final touch was the brooch which was actually part of what I wore on my wedding day.  Voilà!  1940's, or at least my attempt at it.  Stephen wore his tuxedo from our wedding and had his hair slicked back, I think he looked pretty great!  He also carried around a bottle of champagne and glasses as "props" (which didn't last very long).  

I am thoroughly impressed with the group that puts this event together.  They took an abandoned old building and transformed it into a hotel, police station, casino, bar and restaurant (the last three were fully functioning).  This building was 4 stories high and you were allowed to walk anywhere you could reach - all these different rooms and spaces had been outfitted to match the movie!  Incredible.

This is standing in the inner courtyard area, looking up.  All those floors had outdoor hallway/balconies that you could walk across and look down:

Me and Candice in front of the casino:

The guys all done up:

More from our group:

Inside one of the rooms:

The movie was set in 1940's Vienna, some Viennese performers - 

It's funny because the "cafe" was called Cafe Mozart, which is a real cafe in Vienna that we had just seen the weekend before in Vienna (blog forthcoming)!

Alex being a part of the decor:

The guys were "interrogated" and fingerprinted... something about illegal penicillin trade!

Candice was marked as a communist!  Uh oh!

We had a couple hours to walk around and explore the whole building, and the movie started at about 10:30 - "police" came from everywhere and herded us into a previously unseen warehouse type thing with a screen where the movie was shown.  It ended up being an old black & white movie called "The Third Man", starring a young Orson Welles.  It was a good movie, but most of the fun was all the craziness leading up to it!  Great night.