The other day, Sara was told about a very exciting opportunity at the old Odeon cinema in Newport. It’s been shut for years, but there are plans (that are well underway) to turn it into the only cinema museum in Wales. The project is called NEON — Newport Entertains Our Nation — after the original ODEON acronym, which stands for Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation: something I didn’t know before!
Mike and I went to check it out last night and have a tour of the place, expecting it to be derelict, and we were blown away. The collection of projectors and memorabilia in there is incredible. It won’t be open for a good while yet – still lots of work to do in terms of tidying up the inside and outside of the building – but it’s something we’re very excited to have the chance to be involved in. I’d pay to go in there again even now.
We were told we could take photos, but just not show them off until the place is open, so as not to spoil the surprise. I’m keeping to that and the majority of the images I took are going into storage on my hard drive until that date, but the images I have included here are, I think, pretty nondescript and I’m using them for this current project of mine. We’ll see what it decides to morph into as a series over the next few weeks. It needs to take on a life of its own for a bit.