It was a tearful farewell at the Lido Theatre on Thursday night, with a thousand fans congregating to say goodbye to the old-school, unglamorous, 50-year-old cinema in Siam Square. After the last picture show on May 31, all Lido’s staff and managers lined up like a guard of honour to wai and thank the audiences filing out of the rooms, a surprise parting shot that tugged deeply at the heart strings of even the most unsentimental viewers. To paraphrase Chris Hemsworth, aka Thor of Asgard, Lido is not a place but a people. It’s also a memory. That’s why we wept. That’s what we’ll miss Lido for.
Video by Patipat Janthong
A sliver of good news is that Scala, a subject of worry and woe of the past few months, has had its contract extended until the end of 2020. Chulalongkorn University, the landlord of Siam Square, has asked Apex, the operator of the cinemas, “to take care of Scala for a few more years”. Which makes us wonder what exactly Chulalongkorn University is capable of taking care of. Malls and retail space? Fast food joints and cosmetics outlets?
Anyway, the departure of Lido is more than just a sentimental footnote to the ever-evolving Siam Square. In the bigger picture, we should regard the end of the half-a-century establishment as depriving us of another cultural space catering to non-mainstream taste. Lido (and Scala) showed Star Wars and Avengers, yes, but it also had a heart in diversity by programming several types of film and giving a choice to audiences — instead of letting Hollywood blockbusters blithely monopolise the marquee, which is the standard practice of most multiplexes (when Avengers opened, it was alarming looking at the info screen to see 14 multiplex screens listing just one title — why do you have 14 screens then?). This may seem like a trivial matter fussed over by cinephiles, but it’s not: it’s a fundamental issue regarding cultural evolution based on openness and variety of taste. Diversity, not monopoly, makes a culture strong.
Looking beyond Lido, the paucity of public cultural venue is a concern that has hardly been addressed, especially by the state. The “cultural policy” has been pretty much sidelined by the incurably philistine regime. In fact no government, elected or hijacked, has paid serious attention to the forming of a long-term cultural policy, particularly for contemporary culture, such as theatre and film, music and photography. That’s why the death of Lido, which is not a state-funded venue, feels like the death of a rare oasis in a desert to a good number of people.
And yet things are more complicated when it comes to state involvement in the arts. When there’s a semblance of “cultural policy”, prepare to shudder: it means censorship, for instance, like when soldiers “visited” an art exhibition last year and requested the artists to remove some photographs. Or the interrogation of a punk band who sang against the junta. Or, most obviously, the recent uproar when the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) expressed its curious wish to take over Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), a partly city-funded, partly self-supported venue just over a hundred metres from Lido.
One truly has to wonder what the outdated, bureaucratic BMA has been smoking to ever imagine that they can manage a modern art gallery. Because, simply, they cannot. And they’ll have to fool themselves before trying to fool us that they can. After artists and the public poured scorn on them, City Hall seemed to backtrack from the plan to seize control. But the case has dragged on, and now the BMA says they plan to probe the funding and management structure of BACC, which is run by a foundation with some state support. Whatever the BMA is trying to get at — and whether this is another move toward cultural policing — it doesn’t bode well for Bangkok’s flagship contemporary art centre, which has been doing a fairly fine job for the past 10 years.
So, after the tears have dried, after the last reminiscence has been tweeted, the passing of Lido shouldn’t become just a nostalgia-fuelled remembrance. Instead, like Lido did, we should see it as an opportunity to push for diversity, and for more cultural venues that contribute to a wider appreciation of the arts. In fact the BACC (bar uninvited meddling) can step in and fill part of the hole left gaping now that Lido has left the stage; the art centre may not be a real cinema, but it has a screening room and potential in terms of programming. Chula, the landlord of Siam Square, should also show its worth as the country’s intellectual pillar by supporting public education through film, music, art, theatre, etc. This is the time to prove its mettle, its sincerity, its social purposes. The light has gone out at Lido, but let’s hope it’s still shining somewhere.
Kong Rithdee is Life Editor, Bangkok Post.