The cinemas
The recent agreement on the part of several television station owners not to programme films which have still to be shown in cinemas, or are currently being screened, will probably not in itself save the cinema industry. As several of the correspondents to this newspaper have pointed out, it is more than a copyright issue which is causing the audiences to avoid the movie theatres. The cinemas have had a long innings in this country; they were certainly here by the 1920s, decades before the population in some parts of the UK knew what a silver screen looked like. In addition, in earlier times distributors sent new films made in the United States very promptly to Guyana, so local patrons were sometimes more au fait with the latest releases, than were their counterparts in the metropoles. However, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The decline in audience numbers which is now causing the local cinemas to close, set in thirty years ago in the industrialized nations, so it is not as if there was no warning of future developments. What insulated the local industry from world trends for so long was simply the fact that television came late, in addition to which Indian movies, which had (and still have) a large following, were initially not available on the box. Nowadays, however, Indian films as much as western ones can be viewed from the comfort of one's favourite Berbice chair in the security of one's home. The cinema owners here have to recognize that even if TV were banned overnight, they might still have problems attracting back the following which they once took for granted. The cinemas acquired a reputation long before the advent of television for being dirty and vermin ridden. Most local film buffs can recite tales of rats, roaches and, yes, even bugs, infesting many of the auditoriums. And then there were the touts and confusion outside certain theatres when a popular movie was being shown, not to mention the crude 'enforcers' whose job it was to keep order as patrons and touts scrambled for tickets. Not all cinemas have upgraded their screen and sound facilities (although some have), while in general the seating accommodation and decor is at best drab, and at worst a disgrace. Why should people leave the congeniality of their homes to pay money to sit in the uncomfortable and ugly surroundings provided by some of our movie houses? In the hard times, people were prepared to put up with all kinds of inconvenience, but those days have long gone. There are other difficulties too. Several of the major Georgetown cinemas are sited in none too safe areas. There is no secure parking available and moviegoers have every reason to expect that they put themselves at risk when they emerge from the cinema at night. Cinemas abroad have responded to the challenge of declining audiences by creating multi-entertainment complexes housing a small film theatre among many other things, and by dividing up the large movie houses into two, three or four mini-theatres, each showing a different film at the same time. Whether the last-mentioned would work here is doubtful, but some variation on the first could well do so, provided there was security for patrons and their vehicles, and the interior surroundings were plush. One could, for example, envisage a restaurant cum small cinema with even, perhaps, a bowling alley in addition. It would be a pity if after being a mainstay of entertainment for so many decades, cinemas were to become exinct in this country. After all, there are some films to which that little nineteen-inch screen in the corner of the front room simply cannot do justice.
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