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The curtain has come down on one of the kingdom’s oldest movie theatres and popular community hotspots. Awal Cinema has filmed its last reel and is now being demolished to make way for a new development project.
Awal Cinema was one of the eight cinemas built during the rapid expansion of the industry in the 1950s and 1960s and remained a prevalent destination for film fans, especially those within the expat communities surrounding the building in Manama, near the Indian Club and American Mission Hospital.
However, Bahrain film company Cineco has taken the option to knock it down to use the land for a new project, which sources say will be a shopping mall with boutique-style stores and a residential building.
Local resident Santhosh Philip regularly attended the cinema, which mainly showed films in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam, and expressed his disappointment at the establishment’s closure. He said: “I always enjoyed going to Awal on a Friday to watch a movie on my day off. It was right in the heart of our community and easy to walk to, and we knew all of the guys who worked there.
“Awal Cinema was perfect for us, it was very comfortable and had a great sound system and crystal clear screen. Now my options are to either go to the Al Hamra Cinema up the road, which is not as nice, or go to City Centre Bahrain and fight through lots of traffic to get there, as opposed to the couple of minutes’ walk it used to be.”
The community’s gripes with the decision to demolish the cinema go much deeper than simply inconvenience of access though. For some, the cinema’s closure threatens their livelihood, they claim.
Shibu, the owner of an electronics store directly opposite Awal Cinema, is decrying the steep decline in business in the two weeks since demolition work began. He explained: “When the cinema was open, people used to emerge from there after watching a movie and come straight into my shop to browse my wares and purchase things. In the evenings especially, I had big numbers of people coming in.
“In the last fortnight since it closed, interest has dropped dramatically and, therefore, so have my takings. If it carries on this way, I’ll be struggling to make ends meet before long, and I know I’m not the only one thinking the same. My friend who owns a shawarma cafeteria next door used to thrive on hungry visitors who wanted refreshments after watching a movie, but now he has lots of leftovers every night.
“We’re just remaining hopeful that things will pick up again in a year or so when the new complex is complete, but who knows what will happen or even if it will open on schedule and without delays.”
Although in recent years the cinema’s focus was mainly on foreign language films, it used to regularly show top Hollywood features back in its heyday, and one resident looked back nostalgically at his younger years spent at Awal.
Sam Camille, 35, a real estate agent from Budaiya, said: “I was very sad to hear about the closure of Awal Cinema. It’s actually upsetting to see it go; granted, I haven’t been there in years as they stopped showing English movies, but I used to go there every Saturday afternoon after school, walking from my house in Khamis all the way there and then my parents would pick me up after I was done.
“It was actually my favourite place to take dates, and my fondest memory was watching Titanic five times there because all five times I had a different date and I pretended as if I was watching it for the first time! So I knew all the important intimate bits when the girls would break down and I would jump in as a hero to ‘console’ them.
“If I recall correctly, ticket prices were 500fils for regular and 800fils for VIP, those were the days! I have heard that they are going to build a mall in its place which is just a waste; like we need more of those in Bahrain?”
When asked for an official comment, Cineco declined to clarify the future of the Awal Cinema site or the reasons for its closure, and said that an official statement would be issued in the coming weeks.
