"Call me old fashioned..."

Call me old fashioned - maybe even a little biased - but I believe it is impossible to recreate the experience of seeing a film on the big screen. I find the whole thing somewhat therapeutic. The feeling from the moment that the collective hush falls over the auditorium when the lights dim, that for two hours I have an escape.

This February and March, it has been my privilege to bring an Audrey Hepburn mini-season to Macrobert. As I sat in our screening of Roman Holiday, there was a buzz around those in the audience as they chatted away as the ads played in the background. That chatter quickly dissipated as the lights fell and that familiar hush as all heads turn towards the screen where together we all gawked at the beauty of the princess, laughed at the absurdity of the tablecloth bed flip and how ‘a buck fifty’ could be stretched to include shoes, a haircut and an ice cream. The joint anticipation as we waited in line with Joe Bradley at the press event to get one last fleeting moment with Anne was palpable.

Of course, I had seen Roman Holiday before but never on the big screen, the way it was made to be seen, without distraction. Watching it this way, in my escape, it was like seeing the film anew all over again.