Series

The Last Audience

Ashfika Rahman

It was during one winter night when I was sitting on my cozy heaven like place on the earth, my grandmother’s lap. As I remember being in a cinema hall in the village. A hall full of curious eyes, cinema screen was shining and the colorful light rays fading at my skin.

Last audience is a series of fictional snapshot created using expired film. Anonymous faces from Centurion Cinema Hall somewhere in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Where now drugs and prostitution took over the old legacy. In old Dhaka, back then this establishment played predominant role as a source of entertainment for the local- ities. A place where I long to go. The smell of the damp wall, abandoned ceiling and nearly damp seat bring back my childhood moments. Those strange feelings in the eyes of prostitutes, the old ticket checker, whose serving of 50 years in this hall tells me so many stories about their early glorious time and how silent cinema was used to be back in the time and more!

The modern multi storied market is going to dominate and replace these ancient premises, where life is si- lent, suspended, with an unheard story remaining in all of its corners. A part of my life, so many cherish able moments, A musing of my untold childhood diary.

In this era of satellite and internet, we are probably the last generation witnessing the whole concept of single screen cinema hall. These images subvert the meaning of expired, creating an unknown narrative and expressive ambiguity in an unexpected context in the minds of the other end.

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