4DX: Here come the feelies

British Film Institute: When Lowell Thomas first appeared on screen announcing to the world “Ladies and gentlemen – This is Cinerama!” at New York’s Broadway theatre on 30 September some 60 years ago, the face of cinema changed forever. Audiences gasped as the curtains flanking the narrator parted to reveal a vast, curved, louvred screen filling even the periphery of the visual field as, seated at the front of a roller coaster hurtling downwards into a Technicolor oblivion, they were pitched headlong into a bold new all-immersive world.