The value of seeing a film on the big screen

The cinema experience in Cyprus can be positive, but as with elsewhere it needs more support and some thinking outside the box

By Philippa Tracy

Are cinema-going audiences in terminal decline? There has been lots of evidence to suggest that they are. However, I am happy to report that last weekend I went to the cinema twice and on both occasions seats for the screen were almost fully taken. This definitely bucked the trend of my recent experience in Cyprus. I saw Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. The night before, I went to see The Brutalist. A couple of weeks earlier, I watched A Complete Unknown, a portrait of a young Bob Dylan, twice. At two different cinemas. And on both occasions, the theatres were impressively busy. It may have had something to do with Academy Awards season, or something about those particular films that appeal to people my age. There was also a German Film Festival at the Pantheon cinema last week that I missed. But it is great to have cinema options.

Last weekend, I went to the K-Cineplex in Strovolos, one of two cinemas close to me. I wanted to see The Brutalist at the Pantheon Theatre, downtown, the weekend before, because I like the building, the auditorium, the balcony and the big screen; it reminds me of cinemas in my youth, when teenagers still used to snog in the back row. But because of technical issues, they were not able to show the film. This was a shame, as they show films at reasonably early evening start times. At least at weekends. And, if the film, like The Brutalist, is a marathon and not a sprint, at three hours and 35 minutes, I need to settle in early. I struggle to stay awake when a film doesn’t start until well after 8pm. It doesn’t matter how good it is. When the intermission kicked in at 10pm, I was ready for bed. Even though I was enjoying the film, I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I could have started it about four hours earlier. But I was impressed by the amount of people in the audience who, like myself, were old enough to remember life before streaming and DVDs, and were still awake at the end.

I love to go to the cinema. I really don’t even mind going on my own, if nobody else is interested in my choice of film. Over the last couple of years and often, particularly mid-week, or early evening on a weekend, I have found myself the only person, or one of only half a dozen stragglers, in the theatre. As I was, when I saw two other awards-nominated films recently, A Real Pain and Lee. Neither of them seemed to attract much of an audience here. A Real Pain has since won awards at both the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, quite rightly, unlike A Complete Unknown, or Lee, which in my humble opinion definitely should have. Sitting in an almost empty cinema screening, particularly for a really good film is very depressing. I might even say tragic. And it happens often. It is not surprising then that the K-Cineplex at the Mall of Cyprus closed last summer after 17 years. And the Zena Palace in the centre of town, is now rarely used, only open for special occasions, like Cyprus Film Days festival. It can’t all be about streaming options. At least some of this decline has to do with the impact of Covid.

Even in a city as big as London, cinemas are disappearing. When the Fulham Road Picturehouse cinema, with a lovely art deco facade, closed last July, after 94 years, actor Hugh Grant, wrote on X, “Strangely unbearable. Let’s all sit at home and watch ‘content’ on ‘streaming’. While scrolling. Miserable face emoji.” Hollywood studios are now often reliant on financing deals with the big streaming services, and let’s face it, a whole generation of people got used to streaming things at home during the, definitely best-forgotten, Covid lockdown era. Better technology, bigger TV screens, the ability to be on your phone at the same time, and a desire to avoid other people, still seems to be driving this continued shift in behaviour and, consequently, how we consume films. But I really want to urge my friends to get off their sofas, stop streaming, turn off their phones and start going out to see films, as often as possible. Of course, this assumes good cinema options all year round.

There is another cinema in Nicosia that I have been to. I went to the Premier Cinema, in the Mall of Nicosia, once, about a year ago when a friend was visiting from London. We took a wrong turn off the motorway and spent an hour driving around in circles and then up and down a long dirt road. I didn’t have the WAZE app then, which might have helped. And it was dark and badly signposted. I can’t tell you how, but we did eventually make it to watch the movie. Probably due to the fact that I like to be pathologically early when going anywhere unfamiliar. Along with two other strangers, we watched Immaculate, a 2024 American horror movie set in a Catholic convent in Italy. Apart from the fact that I don’t usually care for movies that are so totally bloody and gruesome, much of it was in Italian with Greek subtitles. My friends’ Italian is about as good as my Greek; between us, we got the gist of most of it. But the religious intrigue wasn’t as engaging as I thought it would be. We concluded that much as we wanted to support the cinema-going experience, it was a questionable decision that time.

I would still argue that the experience of going out to see a film on a big screen, is almost always worth doing. I love it. Comfy chairs, surround sound, popcorn and a half decent glass of white wine, if you can get one. What better way to watch a good movie? Or any movie. Well, I draw the line at Captain America: Brave New World. I’m with Martin Scorcese on that one; I am not a fan. And as the only cinema trailers I have seen recently are for Mission Impossible, Superman and Captain America: Brave New World, I am not sure when my next cinema outing will be. Cinemas clearly need to adapt to compete with streaming services, but these type of franchise movies are not the only way. Surely there is room to appeal to a variety of different audiences. What about offering cinema club memberships, as has been introduced with the Styx initiative at the Pantheon, and afternoon screenings of old movies for older people or those with young children? And a decent bar on site. Definitely. Independent cinemas, offering an affordable and eclectic range of movies to attract all sorts of audiences at all sorts of times, are not just an important measure of the cultural life of any city, this is surely one way to survive.

And talking of culture, what about Bridget Jones? Apparently, it made the best box office opening ever for a romantic comedy in the UK and Ireland. It was more popular than Captain America. I get it. Who doesn’t love Bridge? Once a 30-something, chain-smoking, binge-drinking, singleton; now a 50-something widow with two young children, still wearing big pants, still messy and still looking for love. I was so looking forward to seeing this on a big screen, as a shared experience. Laughing together, crying together. And it was fabulous. One slight spoiler was the people in the row in front of us being on their phones the whole time. The light shining straight at us. They clearly thought they were still on the sofa at home. And when my friend tapped the woman on the shoulder to ask her to put it away, we got a mouthful of abuse. For a good two years, during Covid, people stopped going further than their sofas to watch anything. And this is the sort of behaviour that puts people off going out to watch movies again. But don’t give up. Cinema matters. And the cinema experience in Cyprus can be a good one.