An Anatolian City: A Research on Cinema Culture and Movie Theaters in Eskişehir

Abstract

Not only physical presences, but also histories and memories of the citiestransform. The changes in the built environments result in the erasureof past records from urban space as well as from the minds of urbandwellers. Photographs and movies record the past and document the lifeand culture in the built environment. Movie theaters are important asthey are the sites of meanings and memories of the past. First movietheaters were built after cinema was embraced by urban dwellers as acultural activity and a realm of socialization. In order to be accessible bycitizens, movie theaters were positioned at the centers of the cities asnew social and public spaces. In Turkey, cinema appeared as aninstitution after the republic was established, spread in 1940s, andbecame a lifestyle and a means of socialization in 1960s. Pioneeringsteps of the cinema culture took place in Istanbul and soon spreadprimarily in big cities such as Ankara, Adana, Izmir, and Eskisehir.Eskisehir also met cinema culture in the republican period. As cinemabecame a popular means of socialization, the number of movie theatersincluding open air theaters raised up to 25 in the most vivid period. Theadvent and expansion of TV in 1970s and video in 1980s, however,undermined the cinema culture. In the later years, the cinema culturewhich existed in many independent movie theaters spread in various parts of the city transformed into the smaller multi-movie-theaters insterile spaces, i.e. shopping malls, as a part of shopping and diningculture. The movie theaters were not able to resist capitalism, and closeddown one by one, and were erased from the urban space as well as fromthe memories of the citizens. This research aims at exploring anddocumenting the transformation of Eskisehir’s independent movietheater buildings, which were considered as spaces of socialization formany years in the modernization process of the republican period.