Sun Picture Gardens, Open-air cinema in Broome, Australia

Sun Picture Gardens is an open-air cinema on Carnarvon Street in Broome's Chinatown, Western Australia. It occupies a former 1903 Asian goods store that was converted from 1913, with the screen and rows of deck chairs set in an open yard behind the building. It is listed on the State Register of Heritage Places and still operates, with an indoor cinema, Sun Cinemas, added alongside it in 2002.

The cinema opened in 1916 and showed silent films to the local community in the early years of its operation. In 1933, the first sound film was screened there, marking a shift that brought the venue in line with how movies were being presented around the world at the time.

The name Sun Picture Gardens comes from the idea of watching pictures, meaning films, outdoors under the sun, which was simply how people in Broome went to the cinema for generations. Today, visitors still sit in rows of deck chairs under the open sky, giving the evening a relaxed, communal feel that sets it apart from any indoor theater.

Getting there early is a good idea to choose a good seat, since seating is general admission and the deck chairs fill up on busier nights. Because screenings take place outside, it is worth bringing a light jacket or a blanket for the later part of the evening when the air cools down.

Sun Pictures was evacuated in 1942, two days before a Japanese air raid, and its projection equipment was vandalised; army officers repaired it and ran the cinema themselves. Changing reels proved hard, sometimes taking forty minutes, during which a record of You Look Like a Monkey When You Grow Old played over and over.