 | This article contains promotional content .(September 2021) |
Fabien Riggall (born in 1975) is the founder and creative director of Future shorts, Future Cinema and Secret Cinema.
| This article contains promotional content .(September 2021) |
Fabien Riggall (born in 1975) is the founder and creative director of Future shorts, Future Cinema and Secret Cinema.
Riggall started his career in film as a runner and worked his way up going from working as assistant producer to producing short films. He studied at the New York Film Academy. [1]
Fabien Riggall set up Future Shorts in 2003. The company aims to create multi-dimensional environments where audiences experience a film in purpose-built sets, combining art, music, literature, and film in re-imagined, abandoned spaces.
By 2007, Fabien's ideas had evolved to become Secret Cinema and the brand has since expanded to incorporate multiple strands under the umbrella name, including Tell No One, Secret Cinema Presents, Secret Cinema X, Secret Music, and Future Shorts, a global short film-festival. Secret Cinema stages events of varying scale, from a few hundred to a hundred thousand attendees. [2] [3]
Fabien's ambitions are to establish immersive cinema as a mainstream entertainment format in the UK, [4] and has plans for Secret Cinema to take it global. [5]
Secret Cinema's experiences are described by Riggall as a response to society's growing reliance on technology and the increasingly dark, unimaginative reality created by global politics. He claims that 'Digital culture has, in some part, disconnected us from our ability to listen, feel and touch. I would like us to fight back, to build worlds in both the live and online spaces that are focuses on building a culture fueled by the desire for randomness, beauty and creativity'. [6]
Riggall's intention is to create Secret Worlds where films can be turned into real life, becoming large-scale cultural experiences in abandoned spaces. [7] The location and details of each World are never revealed and the film title is often kept secret. [8] Riggall has founded the belief that art can change society and tell truth in a way that cuts through the noise of media and politics as he says that 'the difference between art and entertainment is that art is about changing the world (...) It has a responsibility'. [9]
Rigall co-organized a pro-Europe demonstration, following Brexit results, which brought together 50, 000 protesters in the streets of London. March for Europe became UK's largest political mobilization of 2016.
In September 2015, Fabien set up #loverefugees, a movement to raise awareness of the plight of refugees globally. As part of this project, Fabien installed a temporary cinema in the Calais refugee camp known as the Jungle, the biggest in Western Europe. Fabien motivates his activism by explaining how the refugees will be 'having an escape from their predicament through access to culture ' [19] as the screening 'will offer a break from this constant reality of living in tents'. [19] Subsequently, to the bulldozing of the camp, Riggall donated £25 000 from his production The Empire Strikes Back to the Refugee Council.
In 2015, Riggall launched an event supporting Junior Doctors. Fabien insists that Secret Cinema is a socially conscious organisation that supports different ongoing debates; he expressed his solidarity towards the shortfall in Junior doctors' employment rate, as he created a whole world around the horror movie 28 days later. The NHS has a shortage in staff, and is losing control over an epidemic of rage and most of the population is contaminated. The viewers were thrown into a post-apocalyptic world where the population had been decimated by a deadly virus. The performance's plot aimed to show the importance of a well staffed medical work force.
Riggall created Secret Youth in order to empower Youth through a better access to culture.
Riggall, in collaboration with the Ukrainian pop duo Bloom Twins, organized Night for Ukraine, a fundraising benefit held at the Roundhouse in north London on the evening of March 9, 2022, with the funds raised being donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal, to provide aid to people fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion. [20]
In 2015, Twitter-users blamed Secret Cinema for leaving their actors unpaid. Riggall denied these accusations : 'We are a massive employer of performers. We run a government-regulated volunteer scheme that allows people to have experience in Secret Cinema. (...) I believe passionately in giving experience to people (...) It's a theatrical experience. You could say that all the audience are acting'. [23]
The Independent describes Secret's Cinema's predominant problem to be its cost, going up to £75 for large scale production such as The Empire Strikes Back. Riggall counters that his productions are comparable to West End theatre shows, rather than any other Cinema in London, and therefore so is the ticket price.
In September 2022, Secret Cinema announced it was being acquired by TodayTix for £29,310,651.00 [24]
Fabien has received honours from the likes of The Hospital Club, Time Out and The Evening Standard and brands including Honda and Courvoisier. In their list of London's Most Influential People, the Evening Standard wrote that "Riggall has pioneered a whole new genre". [25]
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