The Paradise Theater - Pattani, Thailand

Push aside the grisly headlines regularly connected to Thailand's 3 southernmost provinces. Behind the reports of terrorist bombings and religious extremism is a gem of a region inhabited by some of the most hospitable people in the land. Pattani, the largest city in the region, is no exception. And despite an absence of active cinemas, mall-bound or otherwise, this is a town that deserves its due among Thailand's urban geography.

Within an hour of setting foot in Pattani I was being whisked around town on the back of a motorcycle belonging to a coffee shop proprietor who, aside from closing up his shop expressly to give me a guided movie theater tour, also refused to let me pay for the coffee. Two hours in, I was sharing a beer with a direct descendant of the founder of the city, a 7th generation Pattanian who graciously gave me an unsolicited tour of his 150-plus year old Sino-Portuguese manor, established by his illustrious forefather on land granted to him by King Mongkut. Old Town Pattani as the neighborhood is informally known, would no doubt be an attraction were not the city so closely associated with sectarian violence.

The following day I was invited down to city hall to talk movie theater history with the City Comptroller, whom I had met the previous evening while sipping beers with my new friend. As it turned out, the Comptroller's father was the movie booker for Pattani's quintet of cinema halls in the 1960's and 70's. We chewed the fat about the good old days of the cinema business, before the the threat of terrorism in Pattani scared people from going to public places. For Pattani, this was a key factor in the decline of movie theaters. 

The Paradise Theater stand's at the far end of an alley, just across from the river.

Of the 5 movie theaters that served the city over the years, only one remains that has any resemblance to its original function - The Paradise Theater. Unsurprisingly, the Paradise was newest of all the theaters built in Pattani, dating only to 1981, the tail end of Thailand's stand-alone movie theater construction boom. Its most recent owner, the southern Thai movie producer/director Khom Akaradej, closed it down in 2006, not long after the southern insurgency gripped the city. 

While the Paradise's dimensional signage still sits boldly atop the cornice, gently reminding people of merrier times, the once cavernous auditorium has been turned into a swiftlet's house.  

6 year sago, moreover, a story about the Paradise was submitted to this blog. You can read that here.

Dimensional rooftop signage, a hallmark of Thai stand-alone movie theaters.

Research led me to the Office of the City Comptroller of Pattani. Here we are creating good will over movie theater memories. 

Some photos taken near the King's Theater, now destroyed, supplied by the Pattani City Comptroller.

Paradise Lost - by Serhat Unaldi & Chwis Kaeomano

We are a group of friends who, in 2007, spent a weekend in Thailand's troubled South, as one of us is from there and we wanted to visit his family in Pattani. On the first day of our stay we went to see some of the city's tourist hot-spots. After stopping at the shrine for the Chinese goddess Chao Mae Lim Ko Niao beside the Krue Se mosque, where the Southern conflict escalated in 2004, we passed some lesser known parts of Pattani. At one point we reached a small alley that was dominated by the site of big pink building at the far end. Its run-down appearance contrasted sharply with the decaying Thai letters on the edifice reading "Paradise." The building was once a cinema.


--> The Paradise Theater dates to 1981 and in its prime boasted of 796 comfortable cushioned seats. If a blockbuster film drew more cineastes than there were permanent seats to sit on, four additional plastic chairs were added to each row, enlarging the capacity to 916. When "Titanic" hit the screen in 1997, the people of Pattani flocked to "Paradise," which operated at full capacity for many evenings. Once in a while, moreover, the theater was turned into a concert hall and live music filled the air.

Then, in 2004, the Southern insurgency escalated and many Pattani locals began to think twice before going out, especially after dusk. While on the whole, families in Pattani have drawn closer together due to spending more time at home, many once-popular places of entertainment are no longer frequented. Some have had to close altogether. And so, "Paradise" was lost.

The theater's last owner, Khom Akaradej, had to shut its doors in 2006. What remains is a crumbling facade and a fascinating melancholy. A place that was built to make people forget their troubles has turned into a monument to violent conflict. Reality caught up with this purveyor of fiction. Since the lights went out, a flock of swiftlets (nok nang aen) have taken up residence in the Paradise, as they prefer to build their nests in darkness. Birds are also covering the outer walls, where some of the theater's former grandeur has survived the ravages of time and neglect. One side of the theater is magnificently decorated with a painted rain forest - a "paradise." Real plants seem to grow out of painted tree trunks adorned with Toucans and other tropical fowl. Like these South American birds, the whole building seems out of place and time, at the end of a remote alley in conflict-ridden Pattani.

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Many thanks to Serhat and Chwis for putting together this great piece of local history! Indeed, it is a new angle on how this once prolific facet of Thai cultural life has come to an end.

Don't forget to send in your own photos and stories of Southeast Asia's stand-alone movie theaters.