Cinemas are back! After another semi-lockdown that forced cinemas to close, we can finally enjoy a proper movie-going experience again. Sure, it might be capped at 50% capacity and you can only sit with one person beside you instead of the classic cinema experience of having your girlfriend on your left while a dude who munches popcorn loudly is on your right. Sigh, nostalgia! But we'll take what we can get for now. Though it's easy to simply go to the nearest mall to go to the cinema, we're spotlighting places that offer a different experience. These indie cinemas deserve as much love as any of the multiplexes do. After losing iconic places like Scala and Bangkok Screening Room, we should do what we can to keep these cinemas alive. Get the popcorn and settle in. It's time to go back to the movies.
The Year of Great Reckoning
A round-up of cinema s trials and tribulations, and some small victories, in 2020
published : 16 Dec 2020 at 04:00
12 The Scala theatre − Bangkok s last standalone cinema − held a three-day Final Touch Of Memory event to bid farewell to film lovers. Photo: Pattarapong chatpattarasill
For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinema as we ve known it was rattled, challenged, and endangered with a Biblical overtone; it s a plague we re dealing with, after all. It was a year unlike any other we had seen before in the 125 years since cinema was invented. And while that sounds dispiriting, 2020 has also been a Year of Great Reckoning during which the equilibrium was recalibrated and the idea of moving images continues, as it should, to evolve.