Ruins...

There has been a great series of posts/photos on Satyamshot of some landmark movie theaters in various Indian cities. Many of these "single screen" cinema halls have seen better days, and seem melancholy today, symbolizing the shifting balance of the Hindi film industry in favor of neo-Hollywood and/or "multiplex" cinema, often with exorbitant ticket prices that price out large segments of the audience that was once the industry's mainstay. In the process, Hindi films are increasingly becoming associated with a particular lifestyle/mode of consumerism -- rather than the cultural phenomena they used to be.

The image below, of "The Strand" (Mumbai), was especially moving...



...This image brought to mind some passages by Bolano or Le Clezio (in the case of the latter, I am thinking of the interviews in Ailleurs) — this theater seems like a rusted, stranded space ship, a messenger from another world, continuing to transmit, but in a language no one around can understand…

For my own movie poster/theater yatra, see HERE.