A single shadeless red light bulb illuminates the front porch. There is no business sign. The street-level windows are dark, unless there’s a movie being screened inside. But if you look up at the second story, you’ll see dim light shining through the windows.

Welcome to the Bar at 327 Braun Court. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know it was there. Eric Farrell and Ted Kennedy opened the combined bar and performance space in late November, but did it with so little fanfare that even people who live and work in the neighborhood missed it. Upstairs, it’s a swanky cocktail bar; downstairs is a screening room for experimental films and an occasional live musical performance.

Kennedy, thirty-one, makes experimental films as a hobby. He says that holding screenings in his Kerrytown-area home proved difficult, so after one too many noise complaints from neighbors, he rented the former Fuji restaurant in Braun Court.

He knew he wanted to screen films there, but he also knew that to pay the rent he’d need to marry it with a viable business. A friend helped him run the numbers and come up with a budget, and when another friend introduced him to Farrell, Kennedy knew he’d found the partner he’d been looking for.

Farrell, thirty-seven, works at the bar full time while Kennedy works for his family’s business and lends a hand when needed. “We’re big believers in owner-run and -operated businesses,” Farrell says. Though he’s never bartended professionally before, he adds, “I’ve been a home cocktail maker for years.” Cocktails, all $9, include the Corpse Reviver #2, made with Plymouth gin, Cointreau, lillet, lemon juice, and Pernod; and the Scofflaw, made with Wild Turkey rye, dry vermouth, lemon juice, grenadine, and Reagan’s Orange Bitters. Both were invented, ironically, during Prohibition. The bar also sells beer, wine, and snacks like chips and salsa, a meat and cheese plate, sardines, and hard-cooked eggs.

The partners decorated the place themselves with the help of some friends, giving it the feel of an up-north backwoods bar, the kind that Yoopers frequent and Fudgies don’t know exists. A stuffed deer’s head adorns one wall, and a taxidermist’s mold for a deer head adorns another. The deer, Farrell says, is named Terrance; the mold, he adds, is just creepy, but fascinating to look at.

But back to the sign, or the lack of one. Kennedy and Farrell repaired the Braun Court sign on the side of their building and consider it to be their business sign, even though theirs is just one of seven buildings on the court. “If the bar’s open,” Farrell explains, “we turn on the sign.” He likes the fact that at first glance it’s not apparent what their business is, or even that it’s there at all.

Kennedy says the title under which they screen movies and present live performances is Study and Observation. So when they advertise an event, all they have to say is that it’s “Study and Observation at the Bar at 327 Braun Court.” Which gives people all the info they really need. As opposed to, he says, “Study and Observation at 327 Braun Court at Ted and Eric’s Bar.” He laughs and adds that as cool as he thinks the name, or lack of one, is, “I will confess I always liked the name Braunsies.”

The Bar at 327 Braun Court, 327 Braun Court across from Kerrytown, 929-5811. Tues.-Sat. 7 p.m.-2 a.m.