We’ve featured a few cinemas lately that have toyed with convention, Weltspiegel in Germany kept much of its historic grandeur, whilst descending into playful futurism in many of its interior spaces – Polish picture house New Horizons Cinema rewrote the rulebook altogether – it’s nice after having your perceptions cleansed, to witness a cinematic experience that harks back to the golden age of movie-going; not that you’d know it from the outside however.
Only Dr. Emmett Brown’s modified DeLorean DMC-12 could whisk you from one era to another so quickly – at street level the mid‐century brick warehouse, renovated by architects Caliper Studio, is all Blade Runner, step through the door, and Repop‘s retro interiors come over all Rebel Without a Cause. It’s a surprising juxtaposition, but one that works rather nicely.
The 2,000 LED backlit glass disks that embellish the custom zinc panel façade make for a startling opening scene, but it’s inside where Nitehawk Cinema are packing their punches; single-handedly responsible for the abolition of a prohibition-era New York State liquor law that prevented the sale of alcohol in cinemas, they not only demand the gratitude of Williamsburg movie-goers who can indulge in their fine selection of craft beers, but the applause of one of the world’s most famous cities as a whole.
On-screen, there’s a steady crop of current box office hits fused with classics like The Warriors and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – but they’re almost just a sub-plot lost in the bigger script of what Nitehawk has to offer…
Photography, Ty Cole
