The public value of cinemas
By Terence Roberts
Guyana Chronicle
July 4, 2004
AFTER movies were invented at the beginning of the 20th century, the creation of cinemas caused an enormous rise in the area of public pleasure. Previously, attending sports events or plays were the main events where the public could enjoy themselves; but when cinemas arrived, the widest public exposure to more humanitarian ideas and attitudes began with the circulation of films in duplicated prints.
Because movies shown publicly in cinemas increased the spread of egalitarian social processes, many past abuses of the powerful over the weaker came to be publicly exposed and criticised. This is so because movies and cinemas were an extension of democratic ideals written and argued about by Western society and culture since the 19th century decades of the French Industrial Revolution, the later Russian Revolution, Mexican Revolution, and the decline of European imperial invasions overseas.
All of these social processes emphasized a public or collective change, a collective re-education of human values in a more openly shared manner, where ideas, emotions, romantic intimacies, knowledge, social ethics, etc., could be conveyed on huge screens in huge buildings seating diverse people. For example, the amazing genius of director/actor Charlie Chaplin, a Hollywood social/liberal, achieved enormous fame and love worldwide, among the young and old, rich or poor, of any race, because in his early silent films, the hero is a man of the streets, a tramp, an abused and amusing outcast Jew whose social dilemmas everyone could see and relate to without a single word uttered.
Chaplin once said his silent motion pictures were a universal means of expression. Such an art-form with such human relevance to all people, was intended for collective viewing, and would lose most of its benevolent effect if restricted to private viewing. Similarly, the humiliating segregation of blacks in the USA up to 1960 was first challenged and changed by cinemas in certain states, which allowed blacks to sit anywhere. Had cinemas not existed then, and only videos and DVDs for private home use, North American blacks would have simply rented films and taken them home to view in private, and therefore the entire social and moral issue of racial discrimination would have been avoided, or delayed solutions indefinitely.
Cinemas help societies and nations with diverse races maintain mutual respect and tolerance for each other by exposing them collectively to the viewing of films. The building of cinemas also leads to a sizeable rise in the employment of architects, masons, carpenters, painters, electricians, abstract designers, and of course, cinema staff. Because cinemas had to be careful not to discourage potential patrons, art décor used was mostly abstract, or with historical figures, or shadows of humans spectating. Instead, what cinemas emphasised were winding staircases, satin drapes, velvet blinds and curtains, intimate lighting, and clean comfortable facilities.
In North America, cinemas were built with such sumptuous décor they were called Palaces. They began to decline when TV programmes cut revenues from children matinees; when their heating equipment, necessary in cold climates, deteriorated; and most of all, when real estate values soared, and parking lots, supermarkets, etc. ruthlessly sought expansion. The resulting destruction of many cinemas in North American inner cities led to the decline of many neighbourhoods, an increase in after-dark human desolation, and subsequently, a rise in nightly crime.
But in tropical South America, or Latin America, the building and nurturing of cinemas continued to be a vital source of keeping their cities and neighbourhoods alive and attractive, and also an exciting public area to open late night cafes and stimulate human interests and social intercourse and discussion. South Americans understood that their people and societies were not guided solely by commercial trends, but by genuine social values and functions, which could make their cities attractive to visitors.
By 1949, 5 000 cinemas existed and functioned in South America, and most are still there today. Mexico excelled in cinema building, using patios with fountains, winding stone stairways with tropical plants leading to entrances. Other South American countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay build numerous cinemas of amazing beauty and comfort in every city. And Italy today has more than 1 900 cinemas in operation.
In Guyana, since the years of British Guiana, cinemas served to establish a basic workable human solidarity among all Guyanese on a daily basis. Local architects excelled in creating wooden and concrete cinemas of comfort and commonsense tropicality. The use of windows which closed prior to daytime shows created a unique feeling of excited anticipation and suspense which only going to the cinema could give. On the other hand, open windows at night-time shows created an exhilarating double-feeling of something local and foreign enjoyed simultaneously, as local palm trees, or fruit trees, rooftops, and starry or rainy skies could be glimpsed outside, while foreign scenes appeared on the screen.
Guyanese cinemas became the cornerstone of vibrant local communities and villages. The original Hollywood cinema built in Kitty village in 1949/50, created a feeling of social contentment, achievement, and after work gathering and ease among villagers, and also made Kitty an attractive place to live in the 1950s and 1960s. Hollywood was also the first Guyanese cinema to use wide-screen cinemascope in 1954, and everyone rushed to Kitty to experience it.
Plaza cinema, which began as the London Theatre, whose precious wooden structure remains today behind the screen, is Georgetown treasure. Plaza is a beautiful comfortable cinema which for decades molded local minds to intellectual heights by showing the greatest international films. Rio in Albouystown helped keep an air of respectability and calm in an area from which many working-class Guyanese rose to become educated and outstanding citizens.
Globe cinema, despite its present state, remains the best built and placed concrete Georgetown cinema. No other Georgetown cinema has a balcony to compete with Globe's stunningly sloping amphitheatre seats, which gives an awesome view of the screen and stage below.
Astor, Globe, Metropole and Strand comprise a unique formation in downtown Georgetown which waits to be re-developed. Cinemas did not decline in Guyana when TV arrived; they declined before, in the '70s, with the arrival of cheap, badly made and unintelligent films from unknown companies. When proper educational classic films from Hollywood, Europe, and the world, once more return to Georgetown cinemas, such cinemas will thrive. Until then, they should remain upright.