The Aung Mingala Cinema Revisted - Dawei, Thanintharyi Region, Myanmar

Another Survey Completed

Round 4 of Myanmar movie theater surveying went off without a hitch and two bouts of food poisoning. The gut problems cut me down ten pounds lighter than when I started, but there's no burnt ankles or any other malady this year to speak of.

My range of research on this trip was relatively narrow, but also dense with findings. Movie theaters old and ancient came into focus, and I acquired a sack full of movie theater memorabilia along the way. Most of it is trash, for sure, but you all know what they about one man's trash.

The little red strip on the above map is Mon State, where I conducted most of my research.

Mon State was my primary research site, supplemented by a few short, precision guided excursions into adjacent States and Regions, including Ayerawaddy, Kayin and Thanintharyi. All were fruitful, even if the pickings get slimmer each year. But for now, lets get things started on the good foot, because that how the journey began.

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The Aung Mingala Cinema

If you've been following this blog long enough to remember my first visit to Dawei back in 2011 then you might recall pictures of a duo of pink movie theaters in a dust strewn backwater. Well the Dawei of 2017 is a bit different from the Dawei of 2011. Dust strewn it still is, though the backwater designation is starting to give way. The most notable change during my six year hiatus is the handful of mid-rise hotels that have been built. At least one other mid-rise tower is currently under construction. 

While the new giants are shockingly out of proportion for the low rise city of around 150,000 inhabitants, they are spaced out enough that the impact is not so dramatic.  

More dramatic is the noticeable increase in foreign tourists. In 2011, Dawei was still well off the beaten track for most of the trickle of foreign tourists that ventured into Myanmar. Six years ago, I remember running into a group of medical doctors on assignment for Doctors Without Borders who were flabbergasted at the sight of another foreigner. Today, the sight of the likes of me wouldn't amount to the bat of an eyelash. 

Most foreign visitors, however, seem to be more interested in intrepid travel to "unspoiled" hinterlands than the town itself. That's fine by me. All the more elbow room for when I'm seeking out the local cinema treasure.

The Aung Mingala in 2011 (left) and 2017 (right). While the new look white paint-job and tacky use of projected lights onto the facade has cheapened the aesthetic, it's the loss of the two palm trees behind the theater which most upsets me. 

Over the past few years a number of willing informants have brought me up to date on the Dawei cinema scene. "The Aung Mingala is now sporting digital projectors and showing 3D films, man" they'd announce. Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, "that weird looking one - what is it called, The Mingala Thiri? - that one's gone under." (Kites Tales Myanmar put together a nice photo essay on The Mingala Thiri Cinema in November of last year.) 

Both bits of intelligence are legitimate. The Aung Mingala has indeed gone through an entire overhaul, including the installation of air-conditioning, digital projection and a brand new screen and sound system. Maybe even cushy new seats to replace the classic but uncomfortable wooden ones. I wouldn't know for sure, as they were much more protective of the place now that it's been upgraded. Interior photography was strictly prohibited.  

In the exterior looks department it has lost a a bit of its mid-century Tropical Art Deco provenance, but mostly in the details. By and large it's as I remember it. What changes were made are not irreversible and a few low road improvements are completely acceptable if it means the building will be around for the foreseeable future. 

Moreover, now that digital projectors are in place, the viewing fare can diversify beyond the super-low-production-value Myanmar movies that had been the exclusive viewing fare for decades. A poster for the most recent installment in the Resident Evil dynasty was tacked up in the lobby. Such Hollywood schlockbusters would not have been possible had the circa 1960's carbon arc projectors not been replaced.  

The same manager from 2011 running the show.

Ticket booth 

 All said, it was good to start out this survey with an active theater. Ever more so considering that much of the new investment in Dawei is being spurred on by the pending development of a nearby deep sea port. Once complete, the Dawei Deep Sea Port and accompanying Special Economic Zone is anticipated to be a game changer in regional trade. Roads cutting through western Thailand to Bangkok and all points east and north will theoretically make shipping from the Indian Ocean quicker, bypassing the long established Straights of Malacca route, where Singapore is the main hub. 

   

Aside from a new and improved road from Bangkok to the Thai-Myanmar border, little work on the mega project has occurred thus far. It seems like all parties involved are waiting to see what happens via the broader geopolitical reordering that is seeming more and more inevitable these days. 

For the time being, that's a good thing for old movie theaters like The Aung Mingala. As property values rise, old movie theaters and the large footprints they sit on become prime targets for redevelopment, particularly when speculation is coming from outside investors who have little interest in anything other than reaping maximum profits. 

The fact that The Aung Mingala was recently upgraded further signals that the ownership has confidence in its longevity. 

Long live The Aung Mingala Cinema!

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Donations warmly welcomed....

The Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project is a one person show. Although I've had some generous grants over the years, by and large I'm self-funded. That does not mean that I'm independently wealthy, or living off of a cozy trust fund. When I'm not documenting, writing about or giving lectures about movie theaters in Southeast Asia, I'm a laborer in Philadelphia, PA. Part of the savings I generate from my labor goes towards this project, the aim of which is to promote historic movie theaters as preservation worthy sites. After 8 years of doing this work, old movie theaters have started to enter the collective consciousness in some circles within Southeast Asia. That's not completely my doing, of course, but I'm not too proud to accept a bit of credit. 

If you enjoy the photos and essays you find here and want to see it continue, please consider kicking in a couple dollars to help sponsor future surveys. Better yet, buy a photo off of me. Send me an email at sea.theater@hotmail.com and I'll send you a selection of images for sale. 

Thanks for reading,

Phil Jablon

  

The Mingala Thiri Cinema - Dawei, Thanintharyi Division, Myanmar

Under the crisp, cool season sun, Dawei calls to mind a set from a Spaghetti Western. Broad, dusty streets, as straight as can be, stretching out as far as the eye can see, are corralled by low-rise, low-density buildings of various tones. It's a sleepy town. By mid-day it grows listless, silent, smothered under a heat-inspired languor. A gentle breeze accompanies you wherever you go, creating a constant hum as it flutes past your ears. All that's needed to complete the Spaghetti Western illusion is dueling gun-slingers backed up by a Morricone score.

Had you been a visitor Dawei in the late 1960's, you might have caught a Spaghetti Western at one of its two movie theaters.

The Mingala Thiri Cinema

The Mingala Thiri Cinema defies architectural categorization (at least by my amateur standards). Five squared columns rising to a central peak comprise the most noteworthy element of its facade. Like its fraternal twin, the Aung Mingala Cinema, situated just a few blocks to the north, the Mingala Thiri is set back from the building-line and partially obscured behind tea shops. Both theaters were built in 1952, likely the product of the same proprietor. But maybe, just maybe, they were each owned separately, by dueling exhibitors, who added a little Spaghetti Western-style competition to this sleepy southern town. Cinema showdown, you could call it.

Ticket window

Concessions being sold outside, in front of the theater.

Long-employed usher.

In Dawei, the cinema business has eroded to the point of near nothingness. At least so it seems from a guest's perspective. Much like its counterpart a few blocks to the north, the Mingala Thiri Cinema has an aura of slow decline surrounding it. You can feel it in the air, see in the eyes of its aging staff.

Asleep on the job.

The Mingala Thiri Entertainment Group

There's some great text painted above the two theater entrances. This one says: "May you prosper with auspicious and noble companions."

This one says: "May our friend's be happy in body and mind."

Dawei was memorable for its colorful tag-alongs, like this guy, who prided himself in resembling Mr. Bean.

Light beam pierces through a window.

Balcony view

Proscenium marked with the year 1952.

Satisfied customers

Five peaks and signage. Mingala Thiri translates to "Auspicious Glory"

Dawei's molasses-slow pace and Wild West aesthetic might soon become a thing of the past. Change is in the air, to the tune of a 10-billion dollar investment. As of November, 2010, an MoU has been signed between Myanmar's military junta and Thailand's largest construction firm, Italian-Thai Development, to build a seaport and industrial complex at Dawei. Most of the facilities will be located along the Andaman Sea coast, thus not abutting the town proper. But a project of this scale, with the potential to rearrange the geo-politics of the entire region, will inevitably have some affects on Dawei itself. For example, boat traffic destined for China from the Indian ocean and points west will no longer have to pass through the Straits of Malacca - long the most important shipping lanes in Southeast Asia - to reach their destination. Instead ships will be able to bypass thousands of miles of sea travel by making Dawei the new port of call. The same logic will accompany exports from southern and western China, as overland transport routes through the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS), reaching as far as the Andaman Sea, continue to be developed. Dawei, then, is likely to see change unlike anything its experienced since the colonial times. With potential investments pouring into the city, will the Aung Mingala and Mingala Thiri cinemas find new life, or quick death? One way or another, Dawei is a place to watch in the coming years.

Read more about the "Dawei Development Project", as it's known, by clicking here.

(Special thanks to San San Pway for her auspicious and noble translation work)

The Aung Mingalar Cinema - Dawei, Thanintharyi Division, Myanmar - PART 2

As promised, your glimpse inside the Aung Mingala Cinema. Unfortunately, imagery of the auditorium itself is missing from this series. I forgot the tripod in my hotel room, plain and simple. Nonetheless, here's the best of what I could get of this iconic structure in a city on the cusp of change.

Ticket booth calculations

Aside from a lone woman working the ticket window, the Aung Mingala is staffed by four or five withered, old men. They have all been employed at the theater for decades, seeing to its general up-keep and day to day operations. When observing these men at work, one gets the impression that they are very literally a part of the theater. They constitute its heart, lungs, brain and eyes. In an off hand way they resemble the theater. One of them dwells behind it. All of these old theater-smiths are quite small, likely the result of being young children during the post-World War II years, when famine, hence malnutrition, hence stunted growth were commonplace in Burma. This smallness of stature lends further credence to their biological relationship to the theater. To be small is to circulate more easily through its vessels and chambers. When giving me a tour of the theater, it's as if they were revealing to me their life stories: stories which few people seem to care about anymore. One feels all too certain that the theater will cease living once they do.

The lifeblood of the Aung Mingala: its staff

Ticket taker/manager

The projectionist with his machine: a Zeiss Ikon carbon-arc projector c. 1958

Bannister woodwork.

The interior of the Aung Mingala is built mostly of wood, as can be seen in this stairwell leading to the balcony.

Seating from behind

A solitary viewer.

It breaks my heart to admit as much, but the Aung Mingala Cinema, it seems, is deep in the throws of decline. To say otherwise would be wishful thinking. It was the weekend in Dawei, the part of the week when cinema halls are supposed to make up for sluggish weekday attendance. At neither of the screenings I attended were there more than 10 customers. Besides myself, one showed up for a Saturday evening show, seating himself all the way in the last row of the balcony. In a theater with a seating capacity of close to 600, the emptiness was pervasive.

"A structure is most legible at the points of birth and death; its interconnections are more discernible as they are added to and then subtracted from. In this way a building is more public in disuse, more open to interrogation in deconstruction, more candidly explanatory of its parts in dismemberment."

- N.F.R. (Need for Ruins) Web-site

January 20th, 2009

The Aung Mingalar Cinema - Dawei, Thanintharyi Division, Myanmar - PART I

Travel by boat to Thanintharyi Division may be off limits to foreigners, but boat travel between the division's ports is not. Aside from flying, it's the only legal way to get from city to city.

A four hour ferry ride north of Myeik deposits us at the Dawei passenger port. Here the coastline is pristine, unspoiled by industry of any kind. From the looks of it there is scarcely any human activity whatsoever along the banks. Only mangrove swamp and other riparian vegetation.

The vessel docks at the mouth of the Dawei River, but it's yet another hour by bus to the city proper. As bus rides in developing countries go, this was easily the most horrifying I've ever experienced. Indeed, the trans-mountain roads of northern Laos or western Shan State, with their amateur engineering around hair-pin curves, sheer cliffs below, made for joy rides compared to a drive through the low-lying paddies of northern Thanintharyi.

A mound of dirt, barely one car lane wide, raised up several meters from the flanking paddy, comprises the road. No shoulder or retaining wall to speak of. The bus, an act of benevolence from Japan circa the early 1990's, used and worn down, has a suspension system akin to a trampoline. That is, every divot along this long neglected highway causes the bus to spring skywards, seemingly out of control. There is no way the tires can possibly grip the brittle asphalt when this occurs. Our driver, moreover, has a penchant for speeding. If we are not flung from the road into the dry paddy fields below, then certainly we will maim an innocent farmer walking along our same path. Maybe a child on a bicycle. An ox crossing between fields. Near town we come inches from rolling over a motorbike carrying three dare-devil teens who are smoking cigarettes and carrying on without a clue. Aside from that close call, no calamities.

Within an hour of dismounting the bus, shaken but unharmed, the first of Dawei's two movie theaters stood before me.

The Aung Mingala Cinema: a Dawei staple since 1952

A very typical Burmese version of Art Deco.

Past tea shops on both sides stands the Aung Mingala Cinema.

Tea shops flank both sides of the Aung Mingala's foreground - recessed, as it is, from the street-side building-line. The shops might obscure a clear view of the cinema from street-level, but they also attract a steady flow of traffic to the theater grounds. In years past, the tea shops and the theater shared a symbiotic relationship with each other, as patrons made a day out of the two leisure activities. Apparently that relationship is much less so today. Movie-going in Dawei seems to be dying out. Tea drinking, at least, has not waned as a shared pleasure among the locals.

A swell idea gone awry: electrical wires interfere with an elevated shot of the Aung Mingala Cinema and its environs.

Up close with the facade. The number 2000 on the cornice represents the year the Aung Mingala was rehabbed, not the year it was built.

The Art Deco facade of brick and cement - along with a small, concrete lobby area, mask an auditorium built almost completely of wood. The floor of the balcony - wood through and through - generates creaks and groans when walked upon. The wooden proscenium around the screen, which - for lack of tripod - I carelessly neglected to photograph, has the year 1952 painted on it. Next year the Aung Mingala will be 60 years old.

Ticket booth

Front entrance

Check back in a few days for a glimpse inside Dawei's Aung Mingala Cinema, courtesy of its devoted - to say the least - staff.

The Gon Cinema - Myeik, Thanintharyi Division, Myanmar

Overland travel to Thanintharyi Division - Myanmar's southern-most territory - is not an option for foreigners. The route passes through sizable chunks of eastern Mon State and northern Thanintharyi Division: land held by the Mon National Liberation Front - one of the country's numerous ethnic armies fighting for autonomy. Boat travel, the most alluring prospect off all, is likewise off limits. The thought of roving journalists, or foreign agitators - meddlers or interlopers of one kind or another, meandering about the labyrinthine waterways of the Mergui Archipelago, is unnerving to the generals up in Nay Pyi Daw.

With air travel the only available option for non-nationals - also the most expensive and least spontaneous - very few foreign tourists make it down to Thanintharyi. Thus the division's Andaman beaches and its three largish towns remain under the radar, way down at the bottom of mainland Southeast Asia's least visited country. Whether this is a curse or a blessing is yet to be seen, but for anybody with a strong interest in the region, the Thanintharyi city of Myeik (AKA Beik, or its colonial name of Mergui) should not be missed. It is arguably the most attractive city in all of mainland Southeast Asia(!).

Myeik: one of the nicest cities in Southeast Asia

There are two elements that make Myeik so special: first is its geography. Half of the town sits on the slopes of a steep hill, descending a few hundred feet to the flat lowlands below. Myeik's main commercial avenue winds down this hill. In certain neighborhoods along its crest stand the elegant, turn-of-the-20th-century mansions of the town's business and political elite. Higher ground for the high and mighty.

The other half of the town extends for roughly a kilometer from the base of the hill to the blue waters of yonder bay. Out into the bay about two or three kilometers sits a long barrier island, with two peaks at either end separated by a narrow isthmus. The island shields Myeik from rough seas and inclement weather, helping to ensure its viability as a port town. It also serves as a verdant frame for the body of water it partially surrounds.

The second element comprising Myeik's greatness is its layout and architecture. Before the British annexed this part of Burma in the early 19th century, the bay extended up to the foot of the hill, where the lower half of the city now lies. Over the century-plus of Union Jack suzerainty, the bay was filled in, block by city block, to its present day limits. Market spaces and warehouses rose on land once inundated by the sea, as Myeik (then known as Mergui) took its place among the important maritime cities in the British empire. To this day, much of the colonial era housing stock survives, intact, if not a little on the shabby side.

Myeik's lone surviving cinema structure, unfortunately, does not due justice to the town's unique appeal, but that doesn't mean it has no charms of its own.

This is the shell of the Gon Cinema. It's all the remains of a trio of theaters which once brought joy and entertainment to the people Myeik. Its owner bought it from the government about 10 years ago and kept it open until 2008. Ailing attendance, he claims, forced him to shut it down. Ever since, he's been using it as a warehouse to store the non-perishables that stock his supermarket on the town's main drag.

Located in the lowland area of town, on a side street leading towards Myeik's central market, the Gon was likely the town's working-class cinema hall when it opened in the late 1950's, serving the stevedores and sailors coming up from the port.

It also happens to be one of the more simply designed movie theaters I've come across to date in Myanmar. The facade of the building runs length-wise, with the auditorium parallel to the street, an uncommon feature among Myanmar theaters of this era. 1958, the peak of the country's movie theater construction boom, is its birth year, however, it lacks much of the architectural detailing common to the times and structural type.

Under the portico

Repurposing the Gon Cinema has not meant erasing its visible past. On the exterior, most of the tell tale signs are still in place. The poster case bolted to the wall still has a poster from theater's final movie three years ago. Two plastic hanging signs, with both English and Burmese writing, make false claims to the theater's existence, while a neon sign still clings to the upper wall.

The interior, however, is another story.

Neon signage

A sliver of shade provided by a column.

Killer robot or just the old ticket window?

Rebar and bags of cement are stored in the defunct Gon Cinema.

As a means of maximizing storage space at the old Gon Cinema-turned-warehouse, the former balcony was extended outwards, creating a whole new level and cutting the place in half horizontally. From the inside the Gon is completely unrecognizable as a cinema.

A worker smiles for the camera while loading cases of cola into the old Gon.

It's all too upsetting that the Gon Cinema is no longer a cinema, but that didn't stop me from having fun; thanks to the work crew that pulled up mid-shoot. These nine guys are employed by the owner of the Gon - a big business man around town. Here they are unloading a truck full of soda into the old theater.

Who needs hand-trucks when you've got hands?

Shoulder carriers

The gang's all here.

Over on Myeik's Main Street, there is a major construction project being undertaken: a seven-story hotel with a supermarket on the ground level is being hammered out. Until 6 months ago, the Shae Saung Cinema stood on that land; by all accounts Myeik's premiere picture house. The proprietor of the hotel project was also the proprietor of the razed cinema. He is the same man that owns the Gon Cinema. Hopefully he won't come up with a second big development idea, otherwise the Gon will forever....be....gone.