My first experience in a real movie theater was with 23 years old

In January of 2020, moments before the pandemic, I had my first experience going to a real movie theater, almost 23 years old. But you must be asking yourself: what do you mean, a real movie theater?
I live in Brazil, a country where the history of cinema is very poorly told. Although it doesn't take us long to have equipment to make cinema since the time of the Lumiére brothers, our problem on display is even greater than producing, even today.

When my father was young (today he is 67 years old), it was still very common for young people to get together to go to the cinema. For many years going to the cinema was an event, almost a luxury one. People were well dressed and lined up on the sidewalk to watch a movie inside giant rooms.

In my city Joinville, in the south of Brazil, I had 3 cinemas on the street, Cine Palace, Cine Colon and Cine Chaplin. The Cine Palace was the largest, a very beautiful structure with columns that referred to Greek architecture.
Nowadays Cine Chaplin does not exist, Cine Colon has become a hotel, and Cine Palace an evangelical church at Universal. But why did this happen?

Since the arrival of shopping malls in cities, people have started to find other forms of entertainment, emptying movie theaters. The solution they found for this was to install movie theaters inside the malls, as it guaranteed the movement of people. Soon, the movie theaters that were found on the streets started to close, due to a lack of public.

This has drastically reduced the number of movie theaters in Brazil. In 1975 we had the record of 3,276 rooms, and in 1995 we decreased it to 1,033 rooms, in the largest country in Latin America.
Only in 2018 we managed to reach the 1975 record, with 3,335 movie theaters. But today, with the pandemic, many cinemas had to close.

As in my city there are only movie theaters in shopping malls, it was necessary for me to go to Porto Alegre, a metropolis that is the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in order to have my first experience in a street cinema. A structure that was exclusively for cinema. And that makes a lot of difference, because unlike shopping, the public does not go by chance, people move around the house exclusively to have an audiovisual experience. In addition, as shopping mall theaters are completely commercial, it is very difficult to find non-blockbuster films and non-North American films. To watch films of other nationalities, usually only in large cities.

The cinema I had the opportunity to visit was Cine Guión (which in Spanish means script), and it was fantastic to see on the posters films that are generally not in the commercial circle. At the time there was Parasita, who had not yet won the Oscar (he only went to shopping mall cinemas after winning the best film), Two Popes from Netflix, The Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and a few others. At the entrance there were art exhibitions and also a thrift store of books and records. There was also a small cafe where there was a popcorn machine. And the cinema room was bigger than I imagined, where it even had super different seats and works of art on the walls.

I had the opportunity to watch Parasita for the second time, but at the cinema and with my brother. It was one of the last times I went to the cinema before the pandemic, and it was a fantastic experience. I hope movie theaters like this will withstand the pandemic and modernity.

Source of data:
Brazil closes 2018 with the largest number of cinemas since 1975 - Special Secretariat for Culture http://cultura.gov.br/brasil-fecha-2018-com-maior-numero-de-salas-de-cinema-desde-1975/