Date of Exploration : 9 Apr 2015
Lights, Camera, Retrospection!
It's showtime for the last remaining "old face" of Singapore's cinematic history through The Projector, an independent movie house that has resurrected the defunct Golden Cinema into a hipster-approved entertainment joint.
With over 230 state-of-the-art cinemas from 8 movie theatre operators on our tiny red dot, we are spoilt for choices of convenience and comfort to escape into a celluloid world. But for a truly unique movie-going experience, The Projector is the place to be. Watching a show here feels like walking onto a life-size movie set of a 1970s cinema!
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| Lock, stock and barrel is how The Projector has restored the theatre halls of the former Golden Cinema. As new developments and re-developments have brought on urban amnesia, there are not many places like The Projector left in Singapore to frolic with nostalgia. |
Getting to The Projector
Housed within the front annexe building of Golden Mile Tower (not to be confused with Golden Mile Complex next to it), you can get here...
By Bus - Hop on bus numbers 100, 961 or 980 headed in the direction of Beach Road.
By MRT (the nearest MRT stations are Nicoll Highway and Lavender)
1) From Nicoll Highway MRT Station (Circle Line), walk towards The Concourse building. Golden Mile Tower is across the street next to The Concourse along Beach Road. Walking time is approximately 5 minutes.
2) From Lavender MRT Station (East-West Line), take the exit of the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ICA). Walk towards the North Beach Road HDB housing estate across the river and cut through the HDB flats in the direction of Beach Road. Cross an overhead bridge near Golden Mile Hawker Centre to Golden Mile Tower. Walking time is approximately 8 minutes.
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| Top Left : Bridge-way leading from Nicoll Highway MRT Station at Republic Avenue to The Concourse. Top Right : Snapshot of Golden Mile Tower from the bridge-way. Bottom Right : Golden Mile Tower is across a side street from The Concourse and next to St John Headquarters along Beach Road. Bottom Right : View of Golden Mile Tower from ground level. |
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| Designed by pioneer architect Goh Hock Guan and completed in 1975, Golden Mile Tower is fashioned after the béton-brut French architectural style popular between the 1950s to the 1970s. Béton-brut
means "raw concrete" and this genre of design concept is known as Brutalist Architecture. |
Golden Mile Tower counts its heydays as being home to Golden Cinema, which was the biggest cinema in Singapore and Malaysia during the yester-years with a seating capacity of 1,500. It screened mostly Chinese movies until the 1990s when the theatre was split to showcase Hindi and Tamil films.
Today, Golden Cinema comprises The Projector that showcases Indie films on level 5 and the original Golden Cinema that continues to screen Hindi/Tamil movies on level 3.
Rewind to Yesterday
The Projector is conceived through a collaboration between Pocket Projects, a creative development consultancy and management company, and FARM,
a cross disciplinary design practice, architecture atelier, and community-centered arts organization. More than just preserving a piece of Singapore's history, the creators hope that The Projector will serve as a creative platform for the local arts scene as well as an alternative to mainstream cinema.
Movies screened here have been carefully curated by film consultancy firm Luna Films, who widens the entertainment choice by bringing in Indie movies and controversial titles worldwide that otherwise won't make it to conventional local cinemas.
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| Lift foyer on ground level of Golden Mile Tower. To get to The Projector, take either lift to level 5. |
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| I thought the logo simulating a projection is very apt and creative. |
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| A roof of old movie posters makes the lift feel like a time machine of sorts. But if you really want that extra old-world feel... |
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| ... take the retro-classic spiral staircase that's opposite the lifts. It's pretty captivating to look up the swirls from the bottom of the stairs. |
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| Feels like I'm winding my way through the intestine of time with the helical climb up. |
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| Though simple and plain, the stairwell is one of the last places in Singapore to admire the beauty of a logarithmic spiral. I would suggest taking the lift up and then going down by the stairs. |
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| As the lift door opens or coming atop the stairway, you will be greeted by the entrance hall of The Projector where modernist furnishings try not to interfere with the period ambience. |
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| Box office is a small counter at a corner. Full-price tickets cost about S$13 and you can check for shows that are screening at The Projector website. The cool thing about The Projector is that you can swig a beer (S$10) while enjoying a movie! I washed my tongue with Dream Machine (S$10). I wondered what kind of machine made the dream a wet one... |
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| Tidbits are on sale and the low tech way of displaying show posters brought back lost memories. |
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| This door knob looks like it survived the 70s to this day. |
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| Before we have more font faces than there are words, a simple directory found along the stairway replicated font types used in the yester years. Meanwhile, a comic artist injected modern funk on the wall outside The Projector's cinematic halls. |
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| With all those shades on, it seems odd that the characters are queuing up to watch a movie. I'm all for updating an old space with contemporary pizzazz but this feels a tad 勉强 (trying too hard). Golden Cinema should be allowed to bask in the allure of its age. |
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| There are 2 cinematic halls at The Projector - the Red Room (pictured here) and the Green Room. |
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| I immediately felt a rush of familiarity when I saw
these folding cinema chairs. I could almost see my 9-year-old self sitting in one of them. Back then, there were no 3D screens, neither the 5.1 or 7.1 Surround
Sound, nor the DTS audio system. |
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| While the seats have been upholstered for comfort, the hand rails and floorings remained as they are originally. The Red Room is generally reserved for private event bookings. |
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| Why sit back and relax when you can lean back and enjoy the show on these beanies? Cool idea... yes? |
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| The Green Room is where most of the public movie screenings take places. |
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| The cinematic halls may be vintage but the entertainment is state-of-the-art. We caught The Birdman in the Green Room and although the seats weren't as comfortable, the movie somehow felt closer without the heavily cushioned seatings of today's cinemas. |
There are many things we can find easily in Singapore, but the opportunity to immerse in authentic sentimentality is like searching for a needle in the haystack. While catching a movie in the old cinema of The Projector is an unusual experience, the novelty worn out pretty quickly for me. So would I come back again?
Yes. Borrowing a phrase from Terminator, "I would be back". But not for the antiqued charm. I'll come back again because of the air of casualness that comes with going back to basics. And also because I can drink beer while watching a movie!
The Projector
Address : 6001 Beach Rd, Golden Mile Tower, #05-00, Singapore 199589
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