Log in to hire Dany

Dany del Pino Rodríguez

Photographer
    
Movie theaters of Marianao. A Sunday without matinee.
Projects (2)
School: Pedagogical University of Havana , Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematography Industry, Arts University of Havana, Institute of Desing of Havana School of Social Communication of Havana University
Public Project
Movie theaters of Marianao. A Sunday without matinee.
Copyright Dany del Pino Rodríguez 2024
Updated Nov 2024
Location Cuba, Havana, Marianao
Topics Abandonment, Culture, Documentary, Photography, Photojournalism
Summary
"Movie theaters of Marianao, a Sunday without matinee" is a photographic essay where I focus in the picture theaters of Marianao municipality and their abrupt dessapiariance.
Before being divided in three municipalities in1976, Marianao was one of the largest and more important municipalities in Havana. Places for the leisure and culture, were essential for the  Marianao's identity. Into this panorama, movie theaters had an important rol. However, during the 1960's, the  reality of movie theaters changed in the locality. Their number start to decrease abruptly. Half century later, cinemas of Marianao have totally desapeared.

"Movie theaters of Marianao. A Sunday without Matinee" (Sp.Cines del antiguo Marianao, un domingo sin matiné) is a photographic essay where I focus on the abrupt disappearance of all the movie theaters in Mariano, a municipality west of Havana, the capital of Cuba. The essay exposes the causes linked to the disappearance of the movie theaters, which were spaces that were essential for the leisure and culture of this community. Demographically, Marianao was the second largest municipality in the country in the 1950s. Parallel to this demographic growth, Marianao was accompanied by a significant urban growth. For this reason the locality was identified by the slogan: Marianao, city that progress. In 1902, after the addition of -El Cano-, a small town in the west of Havana, the territory of this municipality was extended from the west side of Almendares river until the borders of the towns of Punta Brava and El Wajay, reaching a total area of 160 km2. With this administrative and demographic growth, the creation of places for leisure and recreation was a natural process in the municipality. Cabarets, social clubs, casinos, stadiums and many other ways for social entertainment found an ideal environment in the vast territories of Marianao. The movie theaters in particular found a special home and became eminently popular centers of Marianao cultural life. Record, Alfa, Alba, Novia del Mediodia, La Lisa, Principal, Cándido, Miramar, Cine Club de Alistados and Metropolitan are some of Marianao's movie theaters which have survived as symbols from the era in local collective memory. According to data from the Cinematographic and Radial Yearbooks, until 1950s, Marianao had had a total of 39 movie theaters. 25% of them were built during the thirties while 43% and 15% of them were erected during the forties and fifties respectively. In 1958, the Lido theater was erected. To this day, it remains the last big cinema built in Marianao. What has been the fate of Marianao's movie theaters half a century later? Did Marianao stop being a city that progresses? Were its movie theaters not needed anymore? What happened? In 1976, the original territory of Marianao was divided in three municipalities: La Lisa, Playa, and the current municipality of Marianao. When this division happened, the number of movie theaters was already on the decline. Five years later, only 20 movie theaters offered regular screenings across the three municipalities. Unfortunately, the somber fate of Marianao's movie theaters was not different to the movie theaters in the rest of Havana and Cuba in general. New technologies and the increasingly private way of viewing entertainment have drastically altered the collective ritual of coming together to view films. Moreover, the high costs of the movie theaters equipment and the maintenance of these spaces can be also considered causes of disappearance. Furthermore, according to some theories, the government showed a deep disdain toward institutions inherited from capitalism since the first days of the socialist project. This intransigence led to the negligence and destruction of many places erected during the preceding sociopolitical system; Marianao's movie theaters were not spared from this politic. Whatever the reason may be for the gradual abandonment, nothing justifies the magnitude of this cultural catastrophe. The reality leaves no room for doubt: Marianao's movie theaters have been slowly disappearing. Nowadays, some of them are buildings in ruins and while others have been taken over for new uses. Then, film screenings and Sunday matinees are experiences from another time.Cines del antiguo Marianao: un domingo sin matiné - Periodismo de Barrio
Los cines de Marianao fueron desapareciendo poco a poco. Algunos son ruinas y otros pasaron a tener funciones distintas, a veces ajenas a su razón social primaria. Las tandas y la matiné dominical son experiencias de otra era.
Periodismodebarrio.org
311