A Route to Myanmar's Movie Theaters

For the third consecutive year, ye olde Myanmar map will be put to good use.  From my starting line in Yangon, I plan on moving in a northwesterly direction up through Western Bago and then zig-zag  my way across Magwe, Mandalay and Sagaing Regions. Barring any holdups, the survey should end in either Myitkyina, Bhamo or Kalay before heading back down to Yangon by the 21st of February. I will try to squeeze in as many towns and their respective movie theaters as possible in a northerly race against a three-week time limit.

First stretch of the theater hunt. 

Dry Zone theater hunt route

Upper Myanmar theater hunt route

If all goes as planned I will get severely ill - possibly from food poisoning - lose some weight I can ill afford to lose, and maybe suffer a burn or two during this expedition. I will get diarrhea. Dehydration will get me once or twice. I will vomit. The civilian informants and local gendarmes who chased me out of Natmauk - General Aung San's birthplace - and Thandwingyi in 2011 will have hopefully found more useful things to do. I am bracing myself for the inevitable night at a flea bag hotel with mosquitoes, bed bugs and/or carpet beetles. I am bracing myself for the inevitable town with no hotel at all, or no licence to host foreigners. Strange skin irritations will come as no surprise. In the Dry Zone cities, I am prepared mentally to have a few unpleasant encounters with raging ethno-nationalists. I will try not to drink too much Myanmar Beer. I will forget to exercise. Loneliness followed by bouts of mild depression will creep up on me. I will photograph lots of old movie theaters. In the end, barring catastrophe, I will be smitten with Myanmar as usual.

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Exploits of the Expelled

Some scholars in the field of Southeast Asian Studies have argued that it was the spectacle of theater which provided legitimacy for rulers of classical Theravada Buddhist-Hindu polities. To possess within ones domain, the theory goes, troupes of Ramayana performers was like having the heavenly deities personified on Earth. A ruler's awed subjects would readily adhere to state ideology after witnessing the acrobatics of the god circus. And further, the ability to produce such performers was testament to the power and sophistication of the reigning court.

Fast forward a few millennia: movies have supplanted live performance as the leisure-time activity of choice, and the movie theater serves as its temple. One decade into the 21st century and many of the original cinemas of Myanmar, unlike those in other Southeast Asian countries, continue to operate, if in a state of gradual decline. On the advice of my interpreter/travel companion, a veteran of Myanmar back roads, we decide to seek them in several of Magwe Division's more out-of-the-way cities. From our mosquito ridden hotel room in the eponymous division capital we plotted a route: directly east, to Natmauk. From there, south, to Taungdwingyi and then back to Magwe. A triangle of travel, both axes of which, we were told, contain a cinema.

Magwe Division lies in the geographic heart of the country. Its southern boundary with Bago Division marks the transition from "lower" to "upper" Myanmar, to use terminology popularized in 19th century British colonial descriptions. The "Dry Zone," another local moniker, encompasses much of Magwe Division. Annual rainfall here is far below that of most other parts of the country. In January, height of the dry season, the impression of a desert - almost caricature in appearance - strikes the hardest. Cattle trod emaciated through mostly-fallow paddy fields, their slightly better fed human caretakers a flog-length away. In this country of plenty, malnutrition is bountiful.

Two hours of rumbling along a sand-swept road in the back of a covered pick-up, San San Pwint and myself pulled in to the town of Natmauk. The immediate scene was one of transitory rush: always a bewildering welcome to the newcomer. Guided by a local woman whom San San had befriended en route, we were quickly led away from the pandemonium of the transit depot. Behind us, a clamor of motorized vehicles from bygone eras and horse-drawn wagons vied for space. Residential quarters lay ahead.

Walking in tow of the two Burmophones - one native, one foreign born - while they conversed in a language I could not understand, I resigned myself to the tourist's gaze, taking in the streetscape, scanning from side to side, building to building. More than a few of Myanmar's urban zones feel as if the city-building effort was abandoned, mid-stride, decades ago. Instead, it seems, people focused on the far more practical task of procuring a living. For all intents and purposes, that was the case. In cities other than Yangon, streets and sidewalks feel less decayed than halfway built. Natmauk's well-spaced houses and tree-shaded lanes, charming on the surface, obscure the fact that most public utility infrastructure does not exist. The sidewalk on which we strode was but a dusty patch between house and road.

Barely 5 minutes into our walk and a motorbike pulled up beside us. Another soon followed. The blue camouflaged helmets worn by their drivers gave them away. The gendarmes were upon us! Our crime was a given: we had trespassed; entered a town prohibited to foreigners. Expulsion was the likely punishment. At this point our guide quietly departed, wishing us the best as she tried to avoid suspicions of treachery. San San Pwint was left holding the torch, her wits and her ample experience in dealing with Myanmar's petty tyrants our only recourse. In anticipation of such encounters, she had prepared a story that was both non-threatening and partially true: we had come to this insignificant little town, not to document its movie theater - that would be so bizarre, so comically absurd as to be viewed with alarm - but to visit the birthplace of national icon General Aung San.

Natmauk is indeed the town that spawned the leader of Burma's independence movement, father of the country's most popular political aspirant, Aung San Suu Kyi. The son of a lawyer and from a family of outspoken nationalists, Aung San entered the world in Natmauk on February 13th, 1915. His childhood home, a modest teak structure with a pitched roof, is listed in some guide books as an open tourist attraction. Unless one is hunting movie theaters, it's ostensibly the only reason to visit Natmauk.

It was a genuine surprise that we were granted permission to go through with our stated objective. The cops even went so far as to drive us there on the backs of their motorbikes. But the house was closed when we arrived, completely shuttered, with a sign in English on the door prohibiting photographs. We stood in front of this national historic landmark feigning disappointment at not being able to get in, as the cops and San San engaged in what seemed like a lighthearted conversation. A small crowd drifted in to bear witness to the incredible Burmese-speaking foreigner.

Our last stop in Natmauk before the final act of expulsion was the back room of a dingy, smoke-filled teashop near the transit depot. Here the sheriff and his deputy recorded our information on a pad of paper. Names, passport numbers, visa numbers, hotel we were staying at in Magwe, all written down. More conversation ensued between San San and our captors, the translated version soon made available to me. Options were offered to us. We could get on the next train out of town, the next bus out of town, or they could arrange some form of private transport for us. They were kindly interrogators, and as San San Pwint later told me, by the time the conversation was through they were remorseful for having to expel us.

We never got to see Natmauk's cinema.

The stuffy paranoia experienced in Natmauk is a byproduct of a regime mistrustful of everything and everyone. It is deeply ingrained in the law enforcement culture of Myanmar. In smaller towns, the goal of the local authorities when faced with foreigners is simply to move them out of their jurisdiction, regardless of where to, as quickly as possible. Once free of this burden, culpability is lifted and the anxiety of the security threat dissipates. Out of sight, out of mind. Responsibility is delegated. Nobody wants to be held accountable for harboring the enemy.

The paranoid surveillance of officialdom is compounded in Magwe Division the by the presence of civilian informants. These local nuisances seek monetary rewards in exchange for their patriotic whistle-blowing. Unfortunately, they featured prominently on the next leg of the trip.

The next stop on our itinerary was Taungdwingyi, where within ten minutes of our arrival immigration officials had tracked us down and told us to be on the next bus out of town. Though wholley disheartening to be thrown out by the authorities, because of the ineptitude of local informants, the expulsion process had a comic feel to it. Generally speaking, these characters proved themselves to be more blithering opportunists than a network of professional spies. San San Pwint, moreover, was skillful at crushing their spirits if they tried to intimidate us. The most memorable such incident occurred on the main road in Taungdwingyi, when a man approached us and demanded we write our names on a piece of paper. Unable to produce any identification proving he worked for a government agency, San San shredded the paper, handed it back to him and gestured for him to get lost. He thanked us politely for the handful of trash and our kindness.

Informant buffoonery notwithstanding, the suspicious stares and ever apparent xenophobia in Taungdwingwi were reason enough to curtail the theater search. This was the second town in a matter of hours in which we were more or less chased out of. The below photo of the Shwe La Min Cinema, taken on the slide before packing it in, was all I got from this tour of rejection through central Magwe.

A hastily taken shot of Taungdwingyi's Shwe La Min Cinema, the only image produced during a day-long trip through Magwe.

The Shwe Da Win Cinema - Magwe City, Magwe Division, Myanmar

A cinema intact, but out of commission, that's the Shwe Da Win. Its days of being mobbed by exuberant hordes, seeking reprieve from reality in colors more vivid than life itself, are long over. "Golden Royal," as its name translates to, is a name in vestige only. An internet shop occupies one portion of the former cinema, while the remainder is given over to the housing of wares. In the foreground, where movie-goers once parked their bicycles in neatly arranged rows, a vendor hawks womens clothing beneath a canopy.


No data on the Shwe Da Win Cinema was gathered during my time beneath its portico. It was dead, and by this point, so was I. Temporarily sapped of enthusiasm for a subject I'd traveled thousands of kilometers to photograph, I frittered away an hour typing messages of little import in the internet shop therein. The erstwhile theater's essence did not seep into my soul, nor fuel any temptation to describe it. The drive just wasn't there.

An educated guess would place the Shwe Da Win's inception within the period bound by colonial humiliation and military dictatorship: a productive, but short-lived era in Myanmar's long history. An era of high aspirations and flourishing creativity, when movie theaters were built by the dozen.

The Radiance Mini-Theater - Magwe City, Magwe Division, Myanmar

There was little reason to doubt Mandalay's distinction as home to Myanmar's most recently constructed stand-alone movie theater - a state-built giant called the Myoma. In the 1980's, Mandalay, the second biggest city in the country, was struck by two massive fires, leaving large tracts of devastated city in their wake. Over the following two decades the government allocated funds to help rehabilitate certain aspects of the city. In the process, three new movie theaters were erected, the most recent of which was the above mentioned Myoma in 1998. Noting that the private contracting of these iconic buildings has been moot since the current regime seized power in 1962, it seemed logical that, under the circumstances, Mandalay's Myoma Cinema would be the newest of the new. That, however, was an erroneous assumption on my part, quickly dispelled after a more thorough survey of Magwe.

Front entrance of the Radiance Mini-Theater

Magwe is not exactly a bustling metropolis, nor the kind of place where one would expect to find the progressive social forces needed to support a new stand-alone theater. To be sure, in Myanmar old stand-alones are kept in service mainly because a hyperconsumerist shopping mall culture, spurred on by global capital flows, barely exists. From the stand-point of architectural conservation, this is an unintended benefit of economic sanctions. With no money to support this kind of consumption, there is no need to redevelop the prime lands often occupied by movie theaters for more profitable structural types i.e. shopping malls, condominiums, office towers.

In this regard, Magwe's brand new Radiance Mini-Theater circa 2010 is an anomaly. A newly built stand-alone theater in a provincial backwater doesn't seem to fit easily into any equation. However, when looked at in terms of local geography the mystery is solved. The Radiance is indeed the product of global capital flows, but not the kind predicated on mass consumption. We have to look towards Myanmar's most powerful entity, the military, to find its source.

A few kilometers east of downtown, along Magwe's main east-west thoroughfare, the imposing gates to the Magwe Air Base rise skyward. Socialist authoritarianism in poured concrete. As dominating a sight as this entryway is, the gates were manned by a lone security guard slumped in a folding chair, fidgeting with a pocket radio in a desperate attempt to neutralize his boredom. San San Pwit - my indispensable interpreter - and I, were scarsely noticed as we strolled past.

A few short blocks later, we turned off the main road and found the Radiance Mini-Theater, Myanmar's latest stand-alone. Impressed by its shiny newness amid the dusty provincial mellow of Magwe, we exchanged a few pleasantries with the staff, bought our tickets and went in, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness before taking our seats. The film was a typical low budget Myanmar comedy projected from a DVD - viewing fare which ensured that we would depart quickly. We stuck around just long enough to get a feel for the interior: the auditorium was small (it is a "mini-theater") with seating comprised mostly of fake leather love-seats. Once our eyes adjusted we could see that a handful of them were taken up by young couples slouched in intimate entanglement. The Radiance, we concluded, is a den for the young to radiate their love for one another. We left them to their privacy and bad movie.

Back out in the lobby, San San Pwit eased into a restrained conversation with one of the staffers, hoping to glean a bit of information about the new picture house. The key here was to do so without arousing suspicions. The Radiance, after all, is a mere stone's throw from a major military installation. Harmless questions about a topic as seemingly benign as movie theaters can send paranoia levels through the roof. Being in close proximity to a military base makes tensions that much higher.

In spite of the looming unease, San San Pwit glided and glottal stopped her way through a cordial-if unrevealing conversation, while I snapped off a few lackluster photos of the newest movie theater in Myanmar. In the end we concluded that the theater was built to provide entertainment (and a little privacy) for family of personnel stationed at the nearby Magwe Air Base. This theory was partially substantiated by three framed photos above the ticket window depicting military men apparently giving their blessings to the new Radiance Mini-Theater on what was likely opening day.

Lobby view of the Radiance Mini-Theater, with photos of opening day ceremonies presided over by military brass hanging above the ticket window. Who exactly is in the photos is unknown. We didn't dare ask.

The San Pya Cinema - Magwe City, Magwe Division, Myanmar

Following our brief visit to Minbu, made short by a lack of hotels licensed to accept foreign guests, we crossed back over to the Irrawaddy's east bank and the eponymous capital of Magwe Division. Here too the pickings were slim for accommodation. The few hoteliers licensed to host foreigners drove a hard bargain, knowing that it was either their disproportionately high rent or the street, where we would become food for mosquitoes.

Therein lies the chief dilemma of venturing off the beaten track in Myanmar: hotel accommodation is not universal for non-nationals. In more than a few towns, particularly those not on the tourist circuit, finding a hotel with a certificate to accept foreign guests is no guarantee. In such cases, a local authority figure - usually police, sometimes immigration officers - will urge the visitor to leave town as soon as possible - "Get on a boat, bus or train, but be out of our town before the sun sets!" - thus alleviating themselves of the responsibility of having potential saboteurs under their jurisdiction. The political peons of Magwean municipalities were especially nit-picky in this regard.

In the division capital itself there is shelter to be found, thankfully. After a short rest in our dingy room we returned to the streets in exploratory mode. Venturing down what seemed like a main thoroughfare, away from the older wards along the waterfront, we were soon standing in the shadow of Magwe's last operating cinema from the Independence era - the San Pya.

While I perused the grounds of the San Pya, San San Pwit, interpreter extraordinaire, commenced conversation with a local restaurateur, gathering bits and pieces of information about the colorful old theater and the town that it's in. The following abridged history was the outcome:

The theater was built by an ethnic Indian doctor who'd grown wealthy by developing real-estate throughout the city, we were told. Adored by the people of Magwe because of his kindness and generosity, seeing patients even if they were unable to pay for his services, he left the city a poor man after nationalization in 1962. To this day the doctor-developer-movie exhibitor is held in high esteem among those old enough to remember. As one shop keeper near the San Pya put it, "they could take his wealth and holdings, but never his good name."

The role that ethnic Indians played in the modern history of Burma/Myanmar should not be disregarded. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the British colonial administration encouraged migration from India - likewise a British colony - in order to create a non-agricultural labor force. Indian migrants with higher educations, moreover, often took relatively prestigious jobs in the colonial bureaucracy. In the eyes of many Burman, this "Indianization" of the civil service, combined with the powerful economic role played by Indian businessmen throughout the country, was a cause for outrage. Burmese nationalism manifested a strong anti-Indian undercurrent. When the Burman-dominated military seized power in 1962, the nationalization of various industries was seen in the eyes of the perpetrators as a retrieval of Burman power and prestige, even though it was done under a socialist banner. Movie theaters, previously owned largely by ethnic Indians and Chinese, were now owned by the Burmese state.

Magwe's San Pya Cinema.

Close up at a slight angle.

Architecturally, the San Pya boasts a design which I have identified as definitively Burmese, though not to the exclusion of other styles. The facade, boxy and rectangular, features a pattern of brightly colored squares repeated throughout. With at least 5 other theaters across the country that share this aesthetic, and having never seen it in Thailand or elsewhere, in my mind, at least, it is indicative of 1950's Burmese theater architecture.

"Motorcycle parking"

Wooden seats in the San Pya's auditorium.

Signage

Today the San Pya Cinema is an ailing relic. On our first night in town, the film was canceled due to a shortage of customers.

"The best way to revive the place would be to install 3D projection, " mused one shop owner. "People don't want to go to the cinema to see movies they could just as easily watch at home."

That sentiment was quickly disregarded after locating the other, brand new cinema in Magwe.

The Hla Thiri Cinema - Minbu, Magwe Division, Myanmar

There have been a few instances when the search for the stand-alone has led me to places the likes of which are wholly unfamiliar. Where little, if nothing, resonates with my known world. Not sites, not sounds, not much of anything. Notwithstanding the uniqueness of each locale, with its specific geography and myths, artifacts of human invention - at least one of which, should luck prevail, is a movie theater to document - there are times when a given port of call simply feels more removed than usual. At least from my world view. On this second round of research in Myanmar, the first such place was Minbu - where the familiar had gone on holiday.

Minbu sits on the west bank of the Irrawaddy River, several kilometers up and across from the larger city of Magwe - the eponymous division capital. What's visible of Magwe Division from the scant and poorly maintained highways that cross it gives the impression of a desert: flat and dry, blistering hot, the vast majority of its forest cover having long been given over to agriculture, a variety of which is best summed up by the term "to scratch out a living." This is the heartland of the Burman; the central lowlands, where the hierarchy of a civilization has some of its oldest roots and most abject poverty.

Sitting on the west bank of the Irrawaddy, where the mighty estuary spans three miles from bank to bank, Minbu approaches a lost frontier town. From the looks of it, an economy once built on riparian commerce has dried up, evidenced by a waterfront neighborhood that seems to have had zero commercial investment for quite some time. Almost no permanent structures stand in the river zones. Brick and mortar are the rare exception rather than the norm. Instead, houses of wood and bamboo abound, shaded beneath palm and teak trees more typical of the semi-bucolic outskirts of town rather than what is normally the economic core. A new truss bridge stretching across the river is key to the waterfront's stagnation. The road, joining bridge with town, has supplanted the waterfront as the place for investment. All along road's edge new shops and warehouses have sprung up, adapting the economy from river transport to land.

Yet deep in the heart of the old waterfront districts, a relic from more prosperous times remains. One of the few non-timber structures in the area, the abandoned Hla Thiri Cinema.

Having found the Hla Thiri, I like to believe that I now know how Henri Mouhot felt stumbling upon Angkor Wat in the pulsing jungles of Cambodia. A long forgotten temple, marker of a waned civilization, collapsed. Hemmed in by tea shacks on both sides, in an area where wood and bamboo are the predominant building materials, the Hla Thiri towers with divine emptiness.

Concrete back drop to a wooden community: the Hla Thiri Cinema.

The care taker's wife observes in the front yard of the Hla Thiri.

Within a few minutes of my lurking, a diminutive man emerged from the theater. He eyed me suspiciously, keeping his distance, sizing me up. I quickly recognized that he was the Hla Thiri's caretaker, or I as prefer to say, "theatersmith:" men who spend their lives economically, psychologically and residentially attached to the movie houses they look after. In Myanmar, such men have a number of characteristics in common, the most obvious being their small stature. Tiny men with hearts of gold. Quasimotos of the cinema hall. Almost every stand-alone theater in the country has one.

Once his suspicions were allayed, he did what any good theatersmith would do when presented with a guest: he gave me the grand tour.

Come inside!

The first sight to greet my eyes inside this cavernous old theater, with pillars of wood supporting the roof and rows of wooden benches pressed tightly together in the center, was the absence of its far wall. Of all the cataclysmic sights to behold!

With the help of a seasoned translator, the Hla Thiri's devoted theatersmith told all about his crumbling abode.

Rows of wooden benches remain despite the missing wall.

The collapsed wall, we learned, was a recent event. During 2010's rainy season, the Irrawaddy River burst its banks, flooding much of Minbu's low-lying neighborhoods. Water reached as far as the old cinema hall, though no immediately visible damage was incurred. A few months later, at 2PM on a cloudless day, while the said theatersmith was tending to some task on the theater grounds, a loud rumble was heard, followed by a crash. The back wall of the Hla Thiri was gone. In an instant, the townsfolk of Minbu were devoid of cinema hall, and a theatersmith's life stood a perforated wreck.

Looking towards rear of the auditorium. In the far left corner you can see the walls of the theatersmith's little apartment. The ceiling, you may notice, is made of woven strips of bamboo.

Despite his loss, our dear theatersmith seemed in fairly decent spirits. Along with his wife, he continued to live in a back corner of the auditorium, sheets of plywood used to cordon off a small apartment. His meager possessions and a tiny salary provided by the theater company sustain him. He was clearly elated that two people, foreigners no less, would take an interest in something he knew more about than anybody else on the planet. Without batting an eye, he went on about the Hla Thiri's origins and how he came to be its resident worker.

The builder and first owner of the Hla Thiri Cinema, he claimed, was an man of Indian origins, remembered best for his movie-star good looks. He built the Hla Thiri in 1959 as the first permanent cinema hall in Minbu. It's economic success, however, meant very little in the face of political trauma. The owner fled the country following the military coup of 1962, leaving his beloved cinema hall to become a state asset. Soon thereafter, the theatersmith took his first job at the theater as a ticket taker, and the rest is history.

Though out of business due to the collapse of its back wall, the Hla Thiri is once again in private hands, having been purchased from the Ministry of Information's Myanmar Motion Picture Enterprise five or six years ago. The current owners operate another two theaters in Magwe Division; one in Taungdwingyi and one in Namauk - birthplace of independence hero Bogyoke Aung San. Whether or not the Hla Thiri will ever open again is not clear.

The Hla Thiri's loyal theatersmith, standing on the balcony of his long-time home and workplace.

Our conversation with the theatersmith ended abruptly with the arrival of two higher-ups from the theater company. These two were visibly nervous at our presence, shifty-eyed and fidgety despite the assurances of my translator friend that we were merely there to admire the building. Apparently word had reached the main office that two foreigners were seen entering the abandoned cinema and they had gone to investigate. Nothing happened, but we were silently urged to leave, a stark reminder of the general paranoia gripping parts of Myanmar. Magwe Division, for the most part lacking in tourist attractions, was particularly tense in this regard.

We slipped the theatersmith a thousand Kyat note as a token of our appreciation and made our way out, eventually finding a place to stay across the river in Magwe City.

The peak of the Hla Thiri Cinema's facade.

And now a word about my translator:

From Shan State onwards, the bulk of land I crossed came at the behest of a good friend and stellar linguist. Her skills not only gave an immeasurable boost to this project in terms of information gathering, but enabled me to go places that I would have otherwise never given a moment's thought to. One of the preeminent Burmese speakers from the West, in possession of a nuanced understanding of Myanmar; a debt of gratitude is owed to San San Pwit (that's her Burmonym), who opened my eyes to a Myanmar that foreigners seldom get to see. Had it not been for her, a visit to Minbu and the ruinous Hla Thiri Cinema would not have happened.

Hla Thiri means "Noble Beauty."