Flashback to 1920s Shanghai — a heady mix of jazz clubs, opium dens, warlords, and Western decadence. Glamour and grit collided under flickering neon in what was then called the Paris of the East. Amid this chaos, the bioscope emerged as a portal to another world — projecting silent, black-and-white fantasies that bridged the East and West. In smoke-filled theatres, audiences watched in awe as moving images lit up the screen, while outside, revolution simmered, and the city pulsed with unrest. The bioscope wasn’t just a novelty; it was escape, provocation, and the beginning of cinema as a cultural force.

Vintage tiffin boxes, and hand-blown glass bottles, each element referencing Southeast Asia’s shared visual lexicon

At the Fairmont Mumbai, the newly launched restaurant Oryn channels this cinematic past into a sharp, immersive dining experience specialising in Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine. Vintage bioscopes and a large-scale knot installation greet you at the entrance. Inside the dining room, restored relics from the travelling cinema era ground the space in history.