An Evening at Golden Age: Sydney's Best-Kept Screening Room

Golden Age Cinema and Bar, Surry Hills. Photo: Golden Age Cinema and Bar

There's a particular change of atmosphere that happens the moment you step off a Surry Hills street and down a narrow staircase into somewhere else entirely. At the bottom of it, Golden Age Cinema and Bar reveals itself slowly: low light, dark timber, deep velvet, and the smell of fresh popcorn threading through a room already full of people leaning into conversation over cocktails and wine.

It's the kind of room you could sit in without ever intending to see a film, and plenty of people do. Walk-ins are welcome for smaller groups, and the kitchen runs every night from 5 pm until late, with a seasonal menu built for lingering rather than rushing. There's a Golden Hour each evening, negronis, Manhattans and arancini, and a running series of cocktails created specifically around whatever's on screen that week. Alongside a proper dinner menu, there's a candy bar built for the cinema itself: cocktail popcorn in salted, Sichuan chilli, or cinnamon sugar; mapo choc-tops; smoked almonds; and marinated olives, all to be carried straight in with you. The two rooms never feel entirely separate, more like one long evening that happens to move underground for a couple of hours.

A few plates from the evening menu, alongside a glass of wine at Golden Age's bar. Photo: Golden Age Cinema and Bar.

I moved into the cinema, a fully booked, intimate room already buzzing before a single trailer had played. Ten minutes of previews rolled through what was screening and what was coming next, and it became clear fairly quickly that this isn't a place chasing the next blockbuster. It's somewhere for people who want to sit with a favourite classic, follow an award-winning film from somewhere else in the world, or catch a niche pick: a documentary on an artist they admire that no multiplex would ever think to program. Somewhere to land after a day of work, properly leaving the city above you.

That night, the pick was The Lost Record, a sci-fi rock-and-roll essay-fantasy about art, music, and obsession, directed by Ian Svenonius and Alexandra Cabral. Before it started, Svenonius came out to speak to the room, unpolished and unhurried, to introduce his film and express how he felt “heartened” by just how full the cinema was. It was a small moment, but it set the tone for the whole evening: this is a place built around ritual, not simply programming.

The film itself is set in a dystopian near-future where the state dictates what music can be heard. It follows a woman who stumbles on an unsanctioned record in a junk shop, one that's never been played, promoted or approved, and begins something closer to a relationship with it than a fascination. Part fantasy, part essay on art and obsession, part something harder to categorise, it's the kind of film that asks you to meet it entirely on its own terms rather than easing you in. It's an acquired taste, and one I'll admit I hadn't quite acquired, but it's also exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't stumble across anywhere else, which felt like the point.

The room shifted the moment the credits rolled. Chairs emptied fast, the crowd drifting back toward the bar for one more drink before Escape-ism, Svenonius and Sandi Denton's minimal rock and roll project, took the Golden Stage. The sound was stripped-back and repetitive, beat machine and bass line under Svenonius's voice, low and deadpan one moment, high and passionate the next, the kind of music that made people want to move rather than just listen. A few songs in, people had left their seats behind and started dancing near the stage. The film simply gave way to the band, and the night carried on.

Escape-ism performing live on the Golden Stage. Photo: Sophia Kearns

The building carries its own weight through all of this. Golden Age sits in what was, from 1940, the Sydney home of Paramount Pictures, the same theatrette that once screened newsreels to servicemen and women during the Second World War. The 1940s velvet chairs were sourced from Zurich, Switzerland, specifically to preserve that period’s feel, and the projection room still holds vintage equipment, even though screenings now run digitally. Sitting in it, none of that history feels like decoration. It's simply the frame the whole night hangs on.

The theatrette in its Paramount Pictures days, screening newsreels to servicewomen during the Second World War. Photo: Golden Age Cinema and Bar

What makes Golden Age worth returning to isn't any single film, but the range on offer and the clear sense that whatever's screening, someone has actually chosen it. This month alone, the program runs from Ildikó Enyedi's Cannes-winning Silent Friend to Sion Sono's cult classic Suicide Club, a 25th anniversary screening of Amélie, and a season dedicated to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's work, alongside a genuine Australian premiere.

It's also worth noting that one of Sydney's more unusual venues is available for hosting, not simply visiting. Golden Age takes private bookings across both the cinema and the bar, either separately or together, for anything from an intimate dinner and private screening to a product launch or an evening built entirely around one film chosen for the occasion. With seating for up to 56 in the cinema and 42 in the bar, it suits a genuinely private gathering far better than a hired-out restaurant floor or a generic function room ever could: an evening with real atmosphere already built in, rather than one you have to manufacture from scratch. For anyone looking to mark something properly, whether a milestone birthday or a small celebration among close friends, without reaching for the obvious, this is exactly the kind of room that does the work for you.

The bar at Golden Age Cinema and Bar, with its intimate booth seating and low-lit atmosphere. Photo: Golden Age Cinema and Bar

Image credits:

Image 1: Photo courtesy of Golden Age Cinema and Bar

Image 2: Photo courtesy of Golden Age Cinema and Bar

Image 3: Photo courtesy of Golden Age Cinema and Bar

Image 4: Photo by Sophia Kearns

Image 5: Photo courtesy of Golden Age Cinema and Bar

Image 6: Photo courtesy of Golden Age Cinema and Bar