Two shows a week inside the building, and from November to February the screen goes up in the yard behind it.
See what is on this weekThe building went up in 1949 and ran films six nights a week until the circuit closed its platteland houses in 1994. After that it was a furniture shop, then a church hall, then nothing at all for eleven years, with the seats still bolted to the floor under the dust. We bought it at a deceased-estate auction in Beaufort West for less than a second-hand bakkie, mostly because nobody else in the room wanted a building with a projection box in it. Getting it open again took two years, a new roof over the projection end, and a man from Bloemfontein who is one of about four people left in this country who can still service a 35 mm machine. The arithmetic is not complicated. Forty-two seats, two shows a week, and a full house on both comes to under eight thousand rand a month before the film hire. That does not carry a building, which is exactly why the season cards and the kiosk exist and why the yard screen runs all summer. It is also why we bothered: nobody drives a hundred and forty kilometres to Beaufort West on a Friday night, and a town this size should not have to.
Seats are held until ten minutes before the film starts, then they go to whoever is standing at the window. Card or cash. Window open Thursday to Saturday, 16:00 until the last show goes in.
