A sliver of Korat's cinematic past

An old photograph can reveal a lot. Take this shot of the Charoen Rat Theater in Korat, circa 1973. Two years ago, when I photographed the place, I wasn't able to locate any key informants. As a result, no data was compiled.

The below photo of Sam Lor drivers waiting beneath the marquee reveals one important thing, at least: as of 1973, the Charoen Rat was part of a circuit that supplied Shaw Brothers movies. It may, in fact, have been the theater in Korat for Chinese language pictures.

Most medium sized towns would have at least one theater that specialized in Hong Kong/Singapore imports. Shaw Bros. distributed widely throughout Southeast Asia from their Singapore office.

The movie screening at the time of this photo was the kung fu - action, "The Villain."

Next in line is a soft core flick called "Adultery Chinese Style."

Below are a couple of shots of the Charoen Rat from the SEAMTP archive circa 2010.

The Charoen Rat Theater: once the place to watch Hong Kong/Singapore film in Korat, now a motorcycle dealership.

Signage

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(The top photograph was shamefully nicked from Bob Freitag's "The Vietnam War Years of Korat Royal Thai Air Base", an on-line forum for American air force vets to share photos and information.)

The Sri Pong Cineplex - Phimai District, Khorat, Thailand

The civilizational record in Phimai dates back ten centuries to the once-powerful Ankorian Khmers. Masters of hydrology like the current Bangkok authorities could only dream, imperial Angkor built its empire through the careful retention and management of water. They legitimized their rule via monumental architecture, like the temple shown here in the center of modern Phimai town.

Phimai Historical Park, with its manicured landscaping and curation, is the showcase of the town. The rest of the city feeds off its magnanimity, takes a cue from it.

A wall surrounds Phimai. Not an ancient one like can be found ringing other Thai towns, but a modern wall built of concrete and rebar. The wall has succeeded in keeping out invaders. Most notably, hypermarket retailers and big chain stores, a lone 7-11 the exception. Local moms and pops are protected from such predatory schemers. Car congestion is also nipped in the bud by this defensive mechanism. The result is one of the most pleasant towns Thailand has to offer.

The insulation provided by the wall and the pride taken in Phimai's ancient stone heritage was palpable. Locals seemed to relish the quiet, the human scale and neighborly atmosphere. It was detectable at the Sri Pong Cineplex, where expectant crowds, mostly families and young couples, gathered under the theater's awning, reclined in easy conversation while waiting for the doors to open.

A plain, but honest design.

The Sri Pong is a second generation movie theater. Just six years ago it replaced an old wooden theater dating to the 1950's, which was apparently falling apart. Instead of easing out of the theater business, using the land for some lesser purpose - a parking lot, a warehouse, a watering hole with cheap plastic chairs and tables - the proprietary family built anew, naming it in honor of the husband's deceased father-cum-founder of the old wooden theater, Mr. Pong.

At six years old the Sri Pong is the newest independently-owned stand-alone I've come across is Thailand.

Young step-climbers.

Three teens pull up on a motorbike to see what's in the movie queue.

Being as new as it is, the Sri Pong is equipped with all the latest technologies. The Dolby Digital surround sound was crisp, the projection sharp. A Thai rendition of the Kurasawa masterpiece "Roshomon," called "The Outrage," proved the point, and turned out to be a decent movie in the process.

The Sri Pong Cineplex is the cherry on the top of a great little town.

The owner collects viewing fare at the door, as young patrons shuffle through.

Rolling credits, departing crowds.

The grand exit was copacetic, cinematic even, left alone under the fluorescent external lights of the Sri Pong. It's this quality of the stand-alone theater which attracts me so: whether solitary or in the presence of a large crowd, the exit from the theater to the streets marks a return from fantasy to reality in which the two are temporarily blended. An intangible, maybe, coming from one who's spent his life on foot, but no less real.

The Saeng Si Theater - Bua Yai District, Khorat Province, Thailand

Bua Yai is a train town. A train junction town, to be more specific. Here the Nong Khai - Bangkok line grows a spur which cuts over to the west, towards Chaiyaphum Province - though never actually reaching the provincial capital itself.

Remnants of old Thailand, the one that grew up in the decades prior to the highway boom, are easily found in train towns. Streets and sois developed in the absence of the car in train towns. Buildings tend to huddle together, dense, low-rise, along narrow streets, stretching out like ribbons parallel to the tracks. This is where commerce would have been at its most brisk in the days before trucking.

Only river towns can rival train towns for the lover of antiquity. Riparian trade predates the train system, thus spawned a stock of vernacular architecture, mostly wooden, older and increasingly harder to find than what developed in the era of the locomotive. Since neither the train nor rivers represent particularly robust portions of the economy these days, both river towns and train towns tend to retain older charms lost to towns which sit on major highways. For the best in early-modern Thai antiquity, one must visit a town which has both a train station and a river port, but no highway.

Nestled within Bua Yai's narrow lanes, just a block from the train tracks, stands the Saeng Si Theater. Presumably a product of the Thai movie theater boom years (late 1960's to the mid-1970's), today the Saeng Si limps on, a shadow of its former self, with movies only shown during weekends. Fortunately for me, it was a Saturday when I was in Bua Yai. Unfortunately for me, the flooding down in central Thailand had impeded the distribution company from delivering its scheduled film. The Saeng Si Theater was dealt another blow, while I was left kicking the can in Bua Yai, unable to deliver on what I came to do.

The entrance to the Saeng Si Theater has been changed from the front to the side door. The front of the theater has been rented out to a clothing shop. Something tells me this one won't be around much longer.

Door designs

The Charoen Rath Theater - Korat, Thailand

While still in mourning over the loss of the Siam Theater, it's about time to move on. Heart-wrenching images of its charred lobby will only weigh on morale if left to hang in the open indefinitely. Anyway, a future blight is in need of addressing. In the wake of the Siam Theater tragedy talk is once again stirring of a "Master Plan" to raze all of Siam Square and replace it with a shopping mall in the next few years. Presumably that means that Lido and Scala will be obliterated along the way, forever slamming the door on Bangkok's stand-alone movie theater culture.

The "Master Plan" was conceived by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, essentially the office of urban planning, and has been on the drawing board for some time. In my interview with Apex's managing director last May she hinted at this bleak future. Hopefully the plan will be reconsidered.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the Charoen Rath Theater - a 1950's gem in the center of Korat.


Movies haven't screened at the Charoen Rath for a decade or more, and it's since been taken over by a motorcycle dealership, but the facade is still largely intact, including the free standing letters on the roof. Most of the surrounding neighborhood is likewise well preserved, providing a living time capsule of post-Second World War Korat. Pedestrian friendly and loaded with architectural eye candy, this neighborhood - just north of the Lady Mo monument - deserves a stroll if you're in the vicinity.

The Charoen Nakorn Theater - Korat, Thailand

I blame it on the street beasts, those alley-dwelling howlers with their mange and their bilious notions of territory. The mongrels! Without them I'd have spent much more time exploring the dilapidated depths of the Charoen Nakorn Theater and its environs. Dispensing with angry street dogs is not my forte, however. Flight over fight is my favored option, though a pocket full of stones can come in handy at times. too. Ah, street dogs! It's a shame that I wasn't welcomed, because the Charoen Nakorn had some big-80's appeal worthy of closer inspection.

A banner covers the entrance sign to the Charoen Nakorn Theater. It's now a multi-use entertainment center featuring karaoke, snooker, Muay Thai and a restaurant, but no movie theater.

Like many of the more ambitious movie theater designs of the 1970's and 80's, the Charoen Nakorn Theater was devised as the anchor business to a fairly extensive commercial/residential plaza. Ambitious it was! The surrounding plaza contains several different thoroughfares, each one densely packed with rows of commercial-front row houses, three stories tall. Most of them are vacant today, giving it a dead zone feel even during day-light hours.

Architecturally, the entire complex looks like a 1980's vision of the future. The surrounding row houses typify the times by loosely resembling giant arcade game consoles - Pac-Man for Paul Bunyan and Tron for the 40 Foot Woman. But this future was a failed one, as are similar models throughout the country. Who would have thought that the 1980's would have been so prosperous for Thailand, and that relaxed policy on auto imports would drive private car sales through the roof? Sure, the Charoen Nakorn is just off the Mittraphap Highway, but a lack of secure parking made it lose favor to the car-friendly shopping malls that opened later. After succumbing to the profits of pornography for a few years, it finally shut down in the the early 2000's.

In the foreground, Five-Star Network's traveling cinema truck is parked down the alley, with the Charoen Nakorn Theater at the far end. The local movie distribution company keeps its offices in Charoen Nakorn plaza.

Theater at the end of a dog-infested alley

Snarling dogs kept me from getting much closer to the Charoen Nakorn than depicted above, but as luck would have it, Five-Star Network has their offices in the exact same plaza, providing me the opportunity to meet to their Assistant Director. Five-Star Network is Isan's biggest movie distributor, but not the only one - a fact which differs from the other regions of the country, each of which is presided over by a single distributor (the others in Isan are Nevada and Mongkol Major). Besides listing all of Isan's operating stand-alone theaters for me, Five-Star's Assistant Director helped clarify a few things about the distribution system in Thailand.

The three Isan distributors seem to practice a pretty fair revenue-sharing policy with the theaters they supply. They do not charge a fixed rate for the films they rent out to theaters, but rather split the revenue down the middle with the theater owners. In some cases, that probably hurts the distributors. For instance, if a small-market theater in a far-out district only has 20 customers for a two day film allotment, it's probable that the transportation costs of getting the reels to and from the theater out-weigh the revenue. Distributors take a loss, but they allow the little guys to stay in business by continuing their services. How do they make a profit then? Two ways! First, their bread and butter comes from running their own movie theaters. All the profits they collect from their own venues are theirs to keep. No need to share it with anybody except their employees. Five-Star Network makes the most of that by running a three-screen multiplex in Nong Khai and a six-screener in Korat.

Second, there are a few big shopping mall-based chains in Isan, like Major, EGV and SF, which have control over the larger movie-going markets. They provide the distributors with a steady stream of revenue. Five-Star has worked out partnerships with EGV in Korat and Major in Udon to ensure their exclusive distribution rights to those heavyweights, both of which are under the same corporate ownership. In addition, Five-Star Network has an open-air movie division which contributes yet another revenue stream.

From what I've been able to gather, distributors in other regions of the country are much tougher towards the little guys than in Isan. Northern Thailand's distributor, for example - Thana - charges a flat fee of 1000 baht every time they rent a film to a theater. So if the theater only makes 500 baht in revenue, they have to give that plus an additional 500 hundred baht from their own pocket to the distributor. In the North, there's not a single stand-alone theater that's not owned by Thana left in operation because of this nickle and dime policy. In the words of one Isan theater owner, "that's just bad business, all around."

For those remaining independent theater owners in Isan, local distributors genuinely seem to have their interests' in mind. Maybe not as much as the big money multiplexes, but more so than anywhere else in the country. That's one reason why in smaller towns like Pak Chong and Det Udom you can still see a movie on the silver screen.

The Chalerm P. Theater - Pak Chong, Korat, Thailand

The best part of doing this work in Isan is the relatively high rate of operating stand-alone theaters found throughout. Operationalism makes this task all the more rewarding. From a photography perspective, shooting an operating movie theater versus a closed one is the difference between life and death. On a personal note, working stand-alones symbolize the world still having a bit of soul left. But even more to the point, they provide chances for me to do my little project and take in a movie the traditional way at the same time.

The lion's share of Thailand's operating stand-alone theaters are in Isan, with Pak Chong's Chalerm P. Theater among them.

Chalerm P. Theater with ad truck parked in front

Small and inviting

It was noon when I arrived at the Chalerm P. Theater, and Pak Chong's narrow streets were already sufficiently cooked. Within the little theater's lobby, brightly painted signs and coming attraction posters welcomed sun weary travelers to a shady refuge. The Isan sun is not a joking matter this time of year. It's best avoided, if possible.

3 showings per day

Lobby

A theater employee paints over an old movie poster, in preparation for a new one

Small town theaters like the Chalerm P. are only given short runs on most of the movies they show. For instance, in the above photo, Jackie Chan's latest "Little Big Soldier" is allotted only two days by the distribution company. A minimal amount of regular customers make a longer showing period superfluous. It's more practical for distributors to get the film reels back and then resell them to traveling theater companies for out-door showings and private affairs.

Sun drying the latest hand painted sings

Father and son at the ticket booth

Ticket seller

Nui, the ladyboy ticket-taker, and her dog

In years gone by, almost every district in all of Thailand could boast of at least one silver screen. Not so anymore. Movie-going is now a luxury largely reserved for people in the provincial capitols, if they're so fortunate. But Pak Chong's Chalerm P. Theater hangs on, one of the Last of the Mohicans of small town movie theaters.

Ads and atriums

Theater interior

Row E

Here's some fun facts about the Chalerm P. Theater. It opened 1957, the same year that the Mittraphap Highway linking Isan with central Thailand opened. Originally it was a Likay (Thai opera) theater, but switched over to showing film by the early 1960's. At 53 years old, it is very likely that it's the oldest operating movie theater in the country, but that is not confirmed. Either way, it would be nice if the Chalerm P. Theater were able to stay in business for many years to come.

The Sala Phaya Yen - Pak Chong, Korat, Thailand

Situated at the southwesterly tip of Korat province, Pak Chong district has the unofficial distinction of being the unofficial entrance to Isan. The name Pak Chong has its roots in the early twentieth century, during construction of the railroad's Isan branch. Two nearby mountains had channels blasted through them to make way for the train line and the new economic opportunities it would bring. Pak Chong, or "mouth of the channel,"was thus dubbed so in honor of this infrastructural achievement. As time passed and the town grew, it became the domain of two stand-alone movie theaters, the latter or which was the Sala Phaya Yen.

The etymology of the name Sala Phaya Yen can be attributed to the nearby Dong Phaya Yen mountain range, which transects Khao Yai Nation Park and comprises a portion of Pak Chong district. In prior times much of this area was itself known as Dong Phaya Fai, or "Jungle of the Fire Lord," a malarial swath of forest which killed most travelers who dared to venture through it. Subsequent deforestation helped eliminate malarial mosquitoes and make parts of the region suitable for settlement, so the area was renamed Dong Phaya Yen, or "Jungle of the Cool Lord," implying a taming of the wilds. "Sala" translates to pavilion or public rest place. Sala Phaya Yen then means "pavilion of the cool lord." Nice name for a movie theater!

Lifeless lobby, alive with color

The sign posted on the door explicitly announces that "meetballs, smoothies and food are absolutely forbidden to be brought into the theater." It goes on to state that there is a "mid-night screening when available."

Chinese characters adorn the facade, while a pigeon oversees its domain.

By far Pak Chong's most noteworthy feature is that it contains a portion of Khao Yai Nation Park - the first national park to get established in Thailand and by all accounts a breathtaking example of what the Thai countryside was like before 90 percent of its forests were cut down. But not to be completely overshadowed by natural wonders, Pak Chong also had two movie theaters, giving it the balanced combination of healthy environment and escapism.

Built only about 30 years ago, the Sala Phaya Yen was the newer of the two. My next post will feature Pak Chong's older and still operating theater. So stay tuned for that excitement.

The Sala Phaya Yen closed down 4 or 5 years ago.

The Pratai Theater - Pratai, Korat, Thailand

Driving towards Pratai, the northeast corner of Korat province, brown fields of fallow paddy seem to stretch endlessly. In Isan's rural heartland, the horizon is breached only by the occasional herd of cattle and a solitary tree every few dozen meters. Some farmers have piled giant hay stacks upon their parched fields, almost as tall as the trees themselves, sparse though they be. This is a typical sight from any secondary road in Isan this time of year. Bone dry. It calls to mind the Kalahari desert more than tropical latitudes and you think to yourself that the gods really must be off their rockers.

It's not even eleven in the morning but the sun has already baked everything to a sizzle. In an instant a town appears along the road. As you roll down the concrete channel of "Main Street," the heat intensifies. It's like an oven. In spite of the heat, the townsfolk are busy tending to their various businesses - mostly goods and services related to agriculture. Pratai is a small town, but bustling all the same. When the work is done, though, what do the people here do, I comtemplate? How does one beat the heat in the town of Pratai? It would be nice to duck into a movie theater for a few hours, no doubt. Cool down under the flicker of film. Wouldn't that be a treat? But it's no longer an option. Not since the Pratai Theater shut its doors one year ago.

Plain to look at, but once a joy to be in.

Pratai Theater

Monday-Friday showing at 1:00PM and 8:00PM
Saturday and Sunday, an extra showing at 10:30 AM

Once was welcoming

Peeratach Kanarat tells his theater's story from inside the old projection room.

As a recent casualty among the stand-alone circuit, the Pratai Theater still has an aura of life when viewed from the exterior. Regrettably, that's only aesthetic. It's quite dead, cinematically. While I was milling around the theater grounds, Mr. Peeratach Kanarat came down from his office in what I would soon learn was once the theater's soundtrack room. After a brief exchange he offered a guided tour of the building, which has since been gutted of all its movie-watching accouterments.

Staying in the media entertainment industry, Peeratach now operates a local radio station from the Pratai Theater, though if he had his way he'd still be running the family gem in its original form.

"My uncle built this theater in 1982 when I was a just little kid," said the Pratai's former manager. "I practically grew up in here, working all the jobs that I possibly could until I learned the trade inside and out. When I became old enough, my uncle handed the day-to-day operations over to me."

He went on to explain that 'business was still going strong until DVD's starting growing in popularity. Then, by the time a new movie made it to Pratai, bootleggers in Taiwan and Hong Kong had already flooded the market with cheap DVD copies that my customer base could pick up on trips to the local market. We struggled on through dismal times til we just couldn't make it any more."

But the final blow to business came after new legislation regarding entertainment venue safety standards was enacted. On new years eve 2008, a fire broke out in a Bangkok night-club killing dozens of patrons. Soon after, explained Peeratach, the government passed laws requiring all entertainment venues to install state of the art sprinkler and alarm systems - a welcome addition for customer safety but also a huge expenditure for venue operators. "There was no way we could afford to make that kind of investment," he said. "It was no problem for the big guys like Major or SF, but it really hurt the little guys like us. When we heard about it, we decided to call it quits. It wasn't a business we could survive in any longer."


In its post-movie days, aside from hosting a radio station, the Pratai Theater now also hosts this man, who appeared to be living in the former ticket booth. It wasn't clear whether he has a connection to Peeratach or if he's taken up residence on his own. I didn't ask. It's likely that he has been abandoned by a local family and that Peeratach allowed him to take shelter under the theater's veranda.