Hello dear friends, as every Friday I join this community to share the curiosities and habits of our localities when visiting markets, stores, or stores that offer a service that may represent an alternative purchase or consumption. This is an activity to which our dear @dswigle invites us every week.
Today my post is different from the others shared in this community. This post is full of nostalgia and sadness at the same time 😔😞😞
After many years, today I was able to return to the cinema in my small town in Venezuela. This cinema is located in a small town of almost 70 thousand inhabitants where we all know each other. Many of its inhabitants have lived here for more than three generations. Over time my little village has taken the form of a modern city with local job options or businesses that have proliferated, however, the luck for this movie theater has not been the best.
This movie theater belongs to a family that has been in business for two generations and is over 34 years old. It was the first movie theater in the area, with the most modern and spacious facilities. It has 2 rooms with a capacity for 200 people each. I still remember that to get in there were huge lines and in the waiting room, we were squeezed like sardines to get in to see the movie. This movie theater was one of the few recreational spaces we had as teenagers in the area.
Today, my husband and I wanted to remember our youthful days and went to this movie theater to see a movie, but we found it-empty, sad, and languid. When we talked to the owner he explained that the movie theater had already started to decline when the big movie theaters of large corporations such as CINEX and CINES UNIDOS and the streaming service began to boom since they represent a strong competition, but the time they closed due to the pandemic greatly reduced the attendance of customers.
Despite being more than 34 years old, their facilities are kept in optimal conditions with an ample supply store, things that imply a great investment on the part of this family that owns the cinema and although they can no longer pay personnel due to the low income that the cinema leaves them, they continue betting on opening this window of entertainment every day for those who want to support them...they refuse to die.
It was admirable and sad at the same time to see how the owner was the one who sold the tickets, also the popcorn, and was watching the projection of the movies in both theaters 😔😞😞
In the room to see the movie, there were at most ten of us. The entrance fee was $1 to attract an audience. You have to wonder if a facility of this size and quality can be maintained with a $10 profit each day.
At the end of the movie the owner thanked us for supporting him by using the cinema, it was a very touching moment, at that moment, I felt that a part of our history was dying, it was disappearing 😔😞😞
One of the reasons why I would not change my little village is that every place has a history in the life of my husband and me since we grew up there. They are our memories that are in every place, street, park, and people who live there. Today I know that this movie theater is soon to close. I can only treasure the good times we had with our friends when we were young, one of the best stages in a person's life.
