Thinking About Movie Theatres in Times of Insurgency

All the field work I did in Burma prior to last February's military coup feels irrelevant now. Everything there, bar none, has since changed. If I think back to January 2018, the time that this particular theatre was visited, the prevailing sociopolitical narrative was Aung San Suu Kyi's national development regime tinted blood red by an Islamophobic Bamar-Buddhist ethno-nationalist movement; Ethnic cleansing was in the air, but only in a fringy border region. The usual battles between the Tatmadaw and EAO's were flaring up intermittently elsewhere. And so on and so forth.

It was all desperately heavy stuff, of course. But not nearly the all-encompassing devastation that has been the past two years, during which the narrative - and country at large - has gone through a complete transformation. 

Admittedly, what myself and many other casual Myanmar observers failed to recognize was that the above issues were direct forerunners to the coup that followed. In a matter of hours, the military had extinguished the experiment with civilian rule and rolled back ten years worth of progress.

Lets go back to the relative tameness of January 2018. That's when I zig-zagged my way across the dry-zone regions of central Myanmar - Magwe, Mandalay, lower Sagaing - stopping in little towns that have been rattled by insurrection and counter-insurgency since the coup. Rural poverty in this portion of the country has been long-standing, a result mainly of low quality soil for agriculture coupled with decades of national mismanagement. In January, 2018, when I was last in the region, there were signs that the slow moving economies in many of these little towns were enjoying a moderate amount of activity under Aung San Suu Kyi's government.    

The Aung Tha Pyay Cinema; A standard tropical art deco movie hall from the early 1960's

One of the towns I found myself in was Yemethin, which is in the south central portion of Mandalay Region. Not long after arriving, I had a chance encounter with a seemingly random man on the street who happened to speak a bit of English and was curious as to the two foreigners (myself and a friend) in his small, ordinary town that otherwise attracted none. After a bit of small talk, we soon discovered that we had one important commonality: he was the owner of the Yemethin's defunct movie theatre - my ultimate destination. A personal tour soon ensued. 

The Aung Tha Pyay Cinema was built in 1963. It's exterior was designed in the tropical art deco style and was looking sharp on account of a recent paint job. The auditorium was dilapidated but in tact, with all of its rows of wooden bench seats, dust-coated and wrapped in spider-webs, still in their place, as if awaiting a spectral crowd.  

Like a large percentage of cinemas in Burma, the owner was of Indian ancestry. His parents had immigrated from Madras (now Chennai) in the late 1950's, after which they settled in Yemethin. They soon got into the cinema business. 

A hand painted proscenium frames the screen

Close up of the proscenium

It took a bit pleading before my new friend allowed me to set up my camera in the auditorium for some long-exposure shots. Once inside, I found a lone open window allowed in just enough light to illuminate the screen and proscenium. The results were some of my favorite interior shots to date.

Simple tropical art deco stylings

Following the theatre tour, my new friend guided us across town to the Muslim Quarter for a snack. In all actuality it was more of a general South Asian neighborhood, which included many non-muslims, but because the town mosque was the area's central feature it is known as the Muslim Quarter. There we were taken to a streetside eatery where he ordered us some tasty flat breads and curry. His English was just good enough that we could carry on a conversation for a bit longer. I asked him if there had been any mob violence in the Muslim Quarter, as there had been in so many other towns in the dry zone. He replied "yes" reluctantly, casting a downward, ashamed gaze. I felt bad for asking and quickly dropped the subject. I then asked briefly about what other nearby towns I might be able to find some movie theatres. This one here, that one there. He then politely excused himself, leaving us to speculate what other mundane histories this ordinary little town contained.  

A few minutes later the bus came and we left.

The Project becomes The Journal

As if there wasn't already enough nonsense out there on the web vying for your attention, the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project is officially back. Not that it necessarily went anywhere. It's just that since my last post in November 2020 the time I needed for creative writing was squeezed by all manner of obstacle. At the height of the pandemic, for one, and the depths of the Philadelphia winter, for another, I discovered that the combination of hard liquor and vintage exploitation cinema was far more enjoyable than the act of writing. My liver suffered, but my brain was happy. Who'd have known that cannibal holocausts and rape-revenge films could fill the void once lovingly devoted to describing movie theater architecture in remote Burmese hamlets. But they did. And I'm a better person for it. I swear!

Also in my absence, my old blog seems to have somehow expired. Although it is still accessible for reading and scrolling through, I can no longer access it for administrative purposes. Hence the fresh new page with slightly modified title. You can find a link to the old blog on the sidebar to the right should you want to peruse.

Thirdly, I am currently back in Southeast Asia for the first time in two years. Chiang Mai, Thailand for the moment, but in a few days I'll be posted up in the charming seaside town of Songkhla, where a writing residency awaits me for the month of February. What better time to reboot this pastime than the present? The smell of frangipani is in the air, I feel euphoric in a manic sort of way and I have a five year backlog of movie theater material from Thailand and Burma that needs a good dusting off. 

That said, my aim while in Songkhla is to complete book number two (book number one can be found here), the topic of which will remain under wraps for the time being. But I will do my best to update this blog regularly and keep you abreast of the ever changing geography of stand-alone movie theaters in Southeast Asia.