I am working on an article for Script Mag on global cinema, and am stuck on the @&*%$@## lead - I want to open with 3 examples of people in far off probably rural areas watching movies. Not in a traditional cinema. Now, i was gonna just make stuff up, but thought it might be better to find some actual examples online. How difficult could that be?
Well, this has become the pebble in my shoe, and the danged article is not yet written!
Every time I search using Google or Yahoo and use the word "cinemas" I get nothing but articles about the emerging cinema scene in Lagos or somewhere. I can't figure out how to phrase it so that I get the places not the art. And, I've now been at this for hours and have tried every possible word order and word selection... doesn't anyplace have articles about the places where the show movies in far off lands (rather than the movies themselves)?
I have movies shown on walls in Uganda... but I want people watching a DVD on a TV set (as a cinema) somewhere and a makeshift cinema in a basement somewhere.
The somewheres are what I'm looking for. I don't want to insult some country that has a bunch of movie palaces by claiming people are watching movies on sheets.
And I want *exotic* or interesting places. I have been to a basement cinema in Denmark, but that's not exactly as exotic as someplace in Bosnia.
Anyone know someplace exotic with an unusual cinema? Or have a suggestion on where to find this info?
- Bill

Maybe try; movie theaters, movie reviews, watching movies, movie experience, strange place watch movie, movie showing location, isolated movie event,...
I remember reading about how at the US Embassy in Syria (and I imagine some other Embassy's around the world), they have a weekly or monthly summer movie viewing outside on the lawn for the employees and Syrian guests. Free of charge of course.
I also remember reading about other aid-relief agencies in somewhat remote areas having similar movie showing events for people that can't afford to see movies. They might use a large white sheet as a screen and a one of those projector televisions with a DVD player hooked up to it.
Not sure how International law views showing a DVD movie to a group though. In the US that would be illegal without some kind of express permission.
Personally, I remember summer twi-nights when I was a kid going to drive-ins. We would eat and play at the movie playground area with other kids before the movie came on. We might sit in the car, sit outside on lawn chairs, or just lay in the grass to watch the movie. The little town I grew up in (pop. 1750) probably had one of the smallest theaters I've ever been in. Probably had 75 seats at most.

Of course with the advent and popularity of the VCR, home theaters became more feasible for ordinary folks. So some people began designing rooms either dedicated to that, or a multipurpose room dedicated to listening to music and watching television and movies.

You want National Geographic style information, you gotta go get it. I would search for images on iStock photo or Flickr or even Youtube videos about makeshift cinemas. Chose a location, and dig into geo tagged photos, everyone has cameras. Somebody is taking pictures of improvised ghetto makeshift jimmied cinemas out there. NatGeo style, you start with the pictures first

BD

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/2009/09/northern exposure.html

Hmmm...
I've attended a lot of community movie-viewings in rural China, but this goes back 15 years. Typically, a community might have a single television or projector so it gets set up in a common location like under a tarp near the center of town and everyone gets together to watch movies. There's nothing odd about it though, it's just a lot less fancy and comfortable than what most of us are used to. The one funny thing we noticed is that in village after village the most popular thing to watch was episodes of "Dallas" overdubbed into Mandarin. I'm sure by now it's all changed, and every Chinese family has a 42" Samsung flat panel monitor in their house and the most popular program is °ì¹«ÊÒ

(Pretty sure the above characters won't make it through posting; they're the Chinese characters for "The Office").
I've watched a really horrifyingly large number of very bad Hindi films on long overnight bus rides through Rajastan. Nothing strange there except there always seems to be a Sikh onboard who can't hear the movie in the middle of the night because his turban is covering his ears, and he shouts repeatedly to the driver to turn up the volume.
Saw "Rain Man" in Ankara in a theater that could probably have held 300 people but it was just us in attendance and two Turkish families with small children. Every time Tom Cruise swore about every other sentence the parents would turn and glare at us, as if we were Tom Cruise's representatives and we should make him stop it. About mid-way through the film they all got up, clucking in disapproval, and left, leaving us to watch the rest of this decadent and unsavory film alone.

Watched Tarkovsky's "Andrey Rublyov" in Irkutsk. Nothing special about that, except the cold, Soviet, cinderblock building added to the Russian-ness of it.
I was at a resort in Florida last year and they had a huge monitor set up at the kids pool. You could hang in the pool and watch a film at the same time. Kids loved it. They played "Toy Story II" and a bunch of us hung out in the pool and watched with the kids. I'm guessing this is becoming sort of common at resort hotels??
I've been to many theaters in Australia, England, France and Spain as well, and I can't think of anything really odd. What I do remember being different are the concessions. How do people watch film without popcorn? In Bombay (this is pre-1995, so it wasn't yet officially renamed Mumbai) I found Bhelpuri (sort of messy for mid-film watching, but really really good), and lots of sticky Indian sweets. But no popcorn. In China once I got a packet of what looked like Chinese M&Ms, but they were actually printed with W&Ws. The Indian Film Center in London didn't serve food, because YOU'RE SEEING AN ART FILM, YOU HEATHEN.
That's all I can think of, and it's not much. Basically, I think the big cross-cultural difference in film-watching is at the concession stand.

Alan Brooks

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