The Golden Mile Tower in Singapore is in a less glamorous part of the shipshape island city. On the ground floor, it serves as a bus depot for long-haul rides to Malaysia. Also in the lobby, opposite a twinkling, fun-looking Thai restaurant, there's a lonely box office for cinemas specialising in Bollywood movies (the actual screens are on the third floor).
The Projector, a new cinema in Singapore.
But on the fifth floor of this slightly crummy building, a new cinema has just opened. Called The Projector, the two-screen venue received its first viewers last weekend as one of the cinemas in the 25th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF). Earlier this year, when the operator of the Bollywood screens discontinued its services on the fifth floor (and kept only those on the third floor), Sharon Tan and Michelle Goh decided to take up the lease, renovate the two cinemas and launch it as an art-house and non-mainstream space.
The place has old-fashioned appeal, a dull elegance and 1980s deadpan decor that's a perfect antidote to neon-splashed multiplexes. To turn rundown, non-salubrious structures into artsy spaces is a worldwide practice, and The Projector chips in with one for art-active Singapore.
Each of the two screens at The Projector seats nearly 200 people. The rooms have been fitted with digital projectors (though a 35mm projector can be rented to screen film prints). In one of the screens, the chairs in the front section have been replaced by bean bags. The plan, according to Goh, is "not to screen only art-house films, but also classic titles or, say, something like the original Star Wars".
The Projector is an example of a creative way to find cultural life for what could've been forgotten or abandoned urban space. One week into operation, the venue looks promising, though it needs more mileage to prove its lasting value.
Still, as old cinemas in Bangkok have been torn down or written off as unprofitable, The Projector is a good example of cultural thinking and urban cool.
