At the Odeon

When I was a student there, Grahamstown had two cinemas: His Majesty’s and the Odeon. His Majesty’s was the more comfortable and characterful of the two. It was opened in 1935 but was gutted by a fire in 1998. The Odeon was cavernous and draughty, and the leather seats were cracked and hard. But we went there just as often.

Both cinemas screened a number of films during the annual National Arts Festival. In first year, I went to a whole bunch, from the elegant ‘La Dolce Vita’ to the exuberantly hippy ‘Hair’. These were some of the others I saw that year: ‘Vincent and Theo’, Jane Campion’s ‘Sweetie’, the German comedy ‘The Nasty Girl’, the sharply energetic ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’, the beautiful and melodramatic ‘Indochine’, ‘The Exorcist’ uncut and Richard Linklater’s ironic ‘Slacker’ – which I loved.

I can’t say I watched it because, although a friend and I snuck in to watch the contentious ‘The Lover’, we walked out again soon afterwards. We were curious but thought it cold and quite brutal.

This is from a sketch of my friend Qanita and me watching the opening scene of ‘Salmonberries’ at the Odeon, our legs slung over the seats in front of us. I’d already seen ‘Bagdad Cafe’ by the same director which I’d just loved but this was much quieter and slower – though quite haunting. Sitting in the Odeon on a winter’s night, we were shivering at the Alaskan snow.