What do names such as ‘Astoria, Regal, Plaza, Victory, Pigalle, Empire, Roxy, Odeon, Vaudette, Regent, Apollo, Ritz, and Bijou’, mean to you?
Generation Z will probably think they are apps and Millennials that they are computer games. Generation X will think of them as names of men’s suits, restaurants or maybe small-town hotels. Only the Baby Boomers will recognise the evocative names of long closed and largely forgotten bioscopes.
There was a time when almost every South African town and most large suburbs had a bioscope or bio cafe and sometimes more than one. A bioscope was considered more genteel than a bio cafe, where you could watch two alternating films for the price of one and get a free cup of water diluted cold-drink as well.
The Royalty Building on Pritchard Street was once home to a bio cafe (The Heritage Portal)
I grew up in Krugersdorp from the mid-60’s to the mid-70’s and still remember the feeling of anticipation when my two cousins and I went to see a film or ‘movie’ as we called it, at the ‘Vaudette’ or ‘Italia’, the two main bioscopes in town. There was also the local bio cafe, the ‘Capitol’, which I think was spelt with an ‘o’ not an ‘a’, but as children we...
