An intervention and a Pumflet.

‘In ons benoudheid was ons seker die wêreld was besig om te vergaan, en hierdie keer nie op die Gaiety se silwerdoek nie!’

My father, Wilfred Damon, has written down his memories of going to the Gaiety Bioscope, the cinema that once stood in Andringa Street in an area that was known as Die Vlakte in Stellenbosch. Die Vlakte was demolished between 1960 ad 1970 as part of apartheid’s project of separate development and forced removals of racialised people of colour from the centre of Stellenbosch. Wilfred recalls particularly two stories. The one occurred during the earthquake of 1969, where the film, a typical Hollywood action flick of the late 1960s, was interrupted because of the effect of the tremor. At that moment, he writes, fantasy and reality was confused. Patrons ran out of the cinema feeling as if stepping out of the cinema meant stepping inside a real life extraordinary drama of the earthquake and its after effects.

The second story that my father writes about concerns the Plaza Bioscope, the cinema that was designated for white patrons during apartheid. Back then, films would first be screened at the Plaza, then a week or two later, the same films would be screened at the Gaiety, a cinema for non-white people, like my dad. He was thrilled to see that the opera, La Boheme was advertised and therefor due to be screened at the Gaiety too. However, he soon realised that those who were in control of choosing the films screenings had no intention of showing La Boheme at Gaiety. The assumption was the non-white cinema patrons would not appreciate opera, a genre that was deemed as ‘high culture’. My law-abiding father, insulted by this assumption, decided to break the law and planned, together with his good friend, Leonard Biscombe, a projectionist at the Plaza, pretend to be his assistant and in that way watch the opera.

The legacy and brutality of forced removals have left deep scars in the fabric of the city. Narratives of trauma have dealt with the issues around dislocation, belonging and return. Ideas about home is a key theme in many of the narratives.

But how is imagery of the social imagination remembered and dwelled upon?

Pumflet ‘Gaiety’ is a publication of Wilfred’s recollections of both events: the earthquake interrupted screening at Gaiety Bioscope and the non-screening of La Boheme. Pumflet ‘Gaiety’ will be distributed at an event: a screening oF La Boheme on the site where the Gaiety once stood, nearly 50 years ago. The sound of the screening will come from car audio systems load enough to set the mood of an earthquake. Through the visual screening we recall the memory of the Gaiety, and dwell on the emotions linked to the non-screening of La Boheme at Gaiety and my fathers’ act of watching it at the white’s only Plaza cinema. Disappointment, anxiety, resistance, rapture, nostalgia, loss, and trauma are the emotions that direct the mood of the intervention and Pumflet ‘Gaiety’.

Ilze Wolff