Movie houses and memories
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 14 June)—These days all it takes is a smartphone and an internet connection to see movies. Streaming services by Netflix, HBO and others have brought visual entertainment to the tip of one’s fingers anywhere, anytime, although there are those who say that there are movies that are best viewed on widescreen for maximum satisfaction.
But let’s wax nostalgic. Picture your parents’ or grandparents’ hometown in the ’50s to the early ’70s. No TV except perhaps a black and white set in an affluent household. No movie house, and if there’s one, going to it was already a luxury.
So, how did our generation manage to know the latest flicks from Hollywood or from the local movie industry? Almost entirely from the papers, which advertised the movies being shown in theaters in Manila.
And how long did it take before those movies reach the provinces? Imagine this: Father watched “The Ten Commandments” when he was still a student in Manila. I saw it in our town’s only movie house when I was already in first year high school, an interval of at least 20 years! However, the movies that weren’t as in demand as the film about Moses’ saga reached the provinces “faster,” say, a few months after saturating the market in Manila.
As expected, it was a standing room only during each screening of “The Ten Commandments” when the movie came to town. Since the movie house had no aircon almost all the male viewers took their shirts off to lessen the sweating on their bodies. How hot was it inside? Oh dear, I saw the man beside me squeeze his shirt like he was doing a laundry.
A fire in February 1979 that hit the town’s commercial district destroyed the movie house, which had long closed down as most townsfolk preferred to watch movies in neighboring Butuan City. Aside from being airconditioned, the city’s movie houses also showed double, that is, two films for your hard-earned money. It’s usually a combination of a Tagalog movie and an English one, although there were instances that both films were in English.
I can still remember the names of the movie houses in Butuan—Maya 1, Maya 2, and the aristocrat sounding ones namely, Crown Empress, and Supreme. Uhm, I guess there’s a sixth. Was it Dalisay? Not so sure.
It was at Empress Theater that I first watched a movie—I mean movies because it was a “double showing”—in Butuan. One was a gangland-themed opus titled “Hit” and the other one, a Wild West stuff titled “My Name Is Nobody,” which starred Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda.
It was also at Empress that I watched the movie “The Heroes of Telemark” after taking the State Scholarship exam. I was in fourth year high school at the time. Guess who was with me? My teacher, a town beauty titlist, who chaperoned me to the exam. No, no, no, it’s not what you’re probably thinking. Besides, we weren’t watching a love story, see?
(By the way, here’s a trivia: Did you know that some movie houses in the provinces sometimes showed not just two but three films at no added cost?)
Years later, as a student of MSU Marawi, watching movies wasn’t on the list each time I went to Iligan City for a break. But I do remember watching “Voices,” a story about a deaf-mute ballet dancer, at Derbe (or maybe it was at Berds). Beautiful. Not just the movie but also the girl who was with me. The theme song, “I Will Always Wait for You,” is also beautiful and I still sing it sometimes.
A sidenote: “Ice Castles,” not the 2010 remake but the original version produced in 1978, remains my favorite love story movie. Take it from someone who was looking through the eyes of love.
The last movie I saw in Iligan was “The Last Emperor,” which is set during the years leading to the ascendancy of the communist regime in China. Sad. Not just the movie but also me because I was alone watching. Again, I can’t exactly remember if it was at Berds or Derbe. Ah, memory gap.
After MSU, work brought me to Cagayan de Oro where my 12 years of stay addicted me to movies.
Skyhi was considered the best movie house in the city in terms of layout, maintenance and sound quality. The rest included Roket and Kairo owned by the Lim family, which also owns the Limketkai Mall and produces a line of corn-based food items. No wonder that ads featuring their company’s corn oil product were always shown onscreen before the movie reels started rolling.
I watched Peque Gallaga’s “Scorpio Nights” (1984) at Roket, and Adul de Leon’s “Sr. Stella L” (1984) and Lino Brocka’s “Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim” (1985) at Kairo.
Nation and Rizal, both owned by another Filipino-Chinese family, often cornered the top-grossing action and sci-fi films such as “Rambo,” “Die Hard,” “Mad Max (Beyond Thunderdome),” “Star Wars,” and “Dune.” Nation also showed “Silip,” perhaps Maria Isabel Lopez’s most daring film.
In the early ’90s, Skyhi opened two more cinemas, Skyhi 2 and Skyhi 3, a few meters away from Roket and Kairo. New and well-designed, they drew most of the moviegoers, eclipsing their rivals. Two other movie houses, Gotic 1 and Gotic 2, were built near Cogon Market in the early ’90s too. But no thanks to poor location and the filthy surroundings, they soon shut down.
Then the Gaisano City Mall and later Limketkai Mall opened along with their own cinemas, forcing the city’s movie house business to swallow the bitter pill of change. Ororama Mall, now operated by a grocery giant, tried to rival neighboring Limketkai Mall by opening three cinemas but these were shut down due to poor attendance. More malls would rise in the next two decades, and the movie houses of yore have become desolate repositories of memories that may soon be forgotten.
Archaic movie houses have yielded to the almighty malls. Traditional reels have given way to digital technology. But what can replace the memories? (H. Marcos C. Mordeno / MindaNews)
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