Swindon's independent cinema, Sofa Screenings from Create Studios, has unveiled a new look along with its programme for October. Based at the Carriage Works, it shows new releases, modern classics and arthouse films to audiences sitting on sofas, at what it describes as affordable prices.

This month's highlights include free DJ workshops for young people aged 11 to 18 and 19 to 24 on Saturday 10 October, in the Rip It Up season run by the BFI's Film Audience Network, and a relaxed screening with low lighting and subtitles on Saturday 3 October. A film group for 17 to 25 year olds, Reel25, has chosen two of the month's films, and the programme ends with a 25th anniversary showing of Donnie Darko on Halloween.

It is the sofas, however, that have caused a stir. Film fans across the town say they were astonished to learn it was possible to watch a film while sitting on a sofa, a technique several admitted they had been using at home for years without realising it was an art form.

Experts believe the move could transform cinema-going. Early trials suggest audiences settle in, fetch a blanket, ask "what's he done now?" twice, and wake up during the credits, an experience previously only available in the front rooms of Stratton.

"We've had a sofa since 1974," said Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old. "Ron watched every Bond film on it and fell asleep in all of them. He thought they were the same film. To be fair, so did I." She said she might go "if there's a Rich Tea at the interval and nobody puts their feet up. You don't know where people's feet have been. Well, I do on my street. I'm not one to gossip, but number nine has been to Weston."

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, welcomed the news. "The Carriage Works used to be about carriages, and now it's about sofas, which are basically carriages that don't go anywhere, like my career," he said, before quickly adding that he was joking. "I'm pitching them a short film. It's forty minutes of our stockroom, and my band does the soundtrack. Julie from accounts is the love interest. She hasn't agreed to that. There isn't a script. There's a feeling."

Asked what other home comforts could follow, one regular suggested a remote control nobody can find and a person who talks all the way through. It is understood the second is already available at no extra charge.

Donnie Darko, approached for comment on its 25th birthday, is understood to have fallen asleep on the sofa twenty minutes in.