Raphael John-Lall

The age of movie the­atres in a mall-type at­mos­phere has ren­dered cin­e­mas like Pal­la­di­um ob­so­lete, said Tony Sir­joo, man­ag­er of Pal­la­di­um cin­e­ma in Tu­na­puna.The cin­e­ma is set to shut down per­ma­nent­ly on Au­gust 4."Every­thing is dig­i­tal now. You no longer have the as­pect of the 35 mm film. That is done. We did not think it is cost-ef­fec­tive to keep that. This cin­e­ma has been around since the 1940s and has a long his­to­ry," Sir­joo told the Guardian on Thurs­day.

The cin­e­ma will be re­placed with a mall and four cine­plex­es.Sir­joo said times have changed and peo­ple are no longer in­ter­est­ed in go­ing to see a movie alone, but want the en­tire mall ex­pe­ri­ence.

"Mod­ern cin­e­ma to­day is cine­plex-based. Mod­ern cin­e­ma with cine­plex­es will on­ly work in a mall at­mos­phere. Peo­ple want a mall at­mos­phere. If Movi­eTowne was just ten screens and it did not have the Fi­es­ta Plaza and restau­rant, then it would not have worked. Peo­ple go there for an out­ing. If they go to the tra­di­tion­al cin­e­ma, it is not an out­ing, it is just a cin­e­ma and to go home. That era of the hard top cin­e­ma has gone."

Now that the present ver­sion of the old-fash­ioned cin­e­ma will be closed down, Sir­joo said the plan is to turn the site in­to a mall."This will prob­a­bly en­com­pass a four-screen cine­plex. The prop­er­ty is be­ing kept with­in the (Chanka) Seeter­ram fam­i­ly. Of course, we have no idea as yet as to how much the project will cost."There will be un­der­ground park­ing and oth­er big changes.

"The plan is to join it with C&I Seeter­ram Shop­ping Plaza next door, which is al­so owned by the Seeter­ram fam­i­ly. There will be a su­per­mar­ket, one of the top brands in the coun­try, stores, restau­rants and oth­er things. It is go­ing on the con­cept of the mall at­mos­phere. A cin­e­ma with­out a mall is out­dat­ed in these times."

This is what the own­ers of Pal­la­di­um pub­lished in the news­pa­per: "For al­most a cen­tu­ry, Pal­la­di­um cin­e­ma has been a hall­mark of the en­ter­tain­ment land­scape for the com­mu­ni­ties of east­ern Trinidad. Sad­ly, we will come to the end of an era as Pal­la­di­um cin­e­ma will of­fi­cial­ly close as of Au­gust 4."As a fi­nal farewell, the soon-to-be-closed cin­e­ma will be of­fer­ing 12 days of free films to the pub­lic, from Ju­ly 23�Au­gust 3.