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| A wall pasted with Bengali cinema posters in Bangladesh |
The last time I went to a cinema in Dhaka was more than three months ago. For a so-called film buff, that’s a long time indeed.
Eleven years ago, when I first came to live in the capital, I used to go every month, sometimes more.
As a seminary student from a lower middle-class rural family, it was tough to go to the cinema a lot, because my monthly stipend was limited.
Moreover, seminarians were not supposed to go every week. To our directors, too much attraction to films was a sign of a shaky religious vocation. It seems they were right, as I left after nine years of formation. But I was never caught sneaking to the cinema.
How strange that, after going through all that, it just doesn’t attract me any more. The same goes for millions of other Bangladeshis.
There are a few places in Dhaka that show Hollywood movies, often long after they’ve been released everywhere else and can be bought at the shops in DVD.
Meanwhile, the local cinema audience has grown in its maturity and discernment, but the local industry’s output – both in quantity and quality – has fallen drastically.
All the other major arts — theatre, music, painting, literature — have a national center, but film has none. Unlike other parts of the world where everyone wants to work in the movie business, it’s a profession here that no decent family would tolerate their children entering.
There are only around 500 cinemas still open and no more than 80 of them at the most offer a pleasant environment. Multiplexes? Yes, there is one – but it’s the only one in the country.
The reality of it hit home for me the other day when I went to visit my old school in a little town outside Dhaka. The little cinema there, which used to be full most nights and which nurtured my love of the genre, closed its doors two years ago.
Will the government try to revive this dying industry? Will it ever be taken seriously as a form of art and entertainment? Or is it…THE END
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