The bioscope on Church Street has been dark since 1994. It reopened in March.

Why a dorp of two thousand people still has a bioscope

The 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.