The Apex lady, Nanta Tansacha, found herself in an uneasy spotlight two years ago when Siam Theatre was burned down, gutted by the May-hem flames to ashes and rubbish. "When I watched it burn, on TV, it was like I was watching a film," she told the Bangkok Post in June 2010. Now, Nanta has found herself in another nervous limelight _ another dramatic movie if you'd permit the analogy _ when news broke last month that Lido Theatre, and probably the stately Scala, too, might soon be razed to make way for new malls.
Nanta Tansacha at Scala Theatre. PHOTO: SANTIPONG SUEBSANTIWONGSE
Fans, activists and the media responded in rage, wailing and lamenting. There are resounding calls for Chulalongkorn University, who owns the area around Siam Square, to realise the cultural value of the two cinemas and to reconsider the plan. The university's property office came out to quell the resentment by saying that, "No one will touch Lido, yet", and that it was probably a misunderstanding in the first place since the plan of large-scale facelift of the area hasn't yet been finalised.
Still, Lido's lease contract will expire in 2014, and Scala, undoubtedly one of the most majestic cinemas in Southeast Asia (and possibly in Asia), the year after that. Nanta _ daughter of Pisit Tansacha who built Siam, Lido and Scala in the 1960s _ has no idea how Chula will move after that, and given the track record of the university's investment aspirations, the popular concern over the fate of Bangkok's historic movie houses isn't merely a product of paranoia, melodrama, or a hunch.
The Tansacha family was a key influence in the heyday of colossal stand-alone cinemas that once dotted the street of the capital; her father was a partner and manager of the legendary Chalermthai Theatre. Nanta started working at Apex _ Siam, Lido and Scala _ even before she graduated from university. Her first lesson, she recalls, was to clean an auditorium in 10 minutes between each screening ("sunflower seeds people ate were a big problem then"), and the gentle lady, whose other passion is dogs, speaks of her cinemas as if they were her whole life, which they probably are.
"Siam Square is my home," she says. "But to be precise, we don't own this house, we're a long-time tenant who's grown to see this as our own house. So it's up to the owner to decide whether they'll let us stay on or not.
"Of course, we want to keep doing what we do. We've been here since there was nothing here, and we've built this area together. We have no plan to leave if we're allowed to stay."
Usually, Nanta says, Chula renews the lease contract for Apex on a short-term basis, from three to five years. "But we've always been a good tenant," she adds. "We never complain and we always comply by the rules."
It was a touch of madness, Nanta admits with a half-smile, that her father invested so much capital and effort to build such a grand monument of movies, even by that decade's standard when cinema halls like Coliseum and Phrakamong Theatre seated between 2,000 to 3,000 (Siam's capacity was 1,000; the original Lido was 800 before it became a three-screen multiplex; and Scala originally seated 1,000, before the extension of the stage in front of the screen reduced it to nearly 900). At the beginning, the Tansacha family even had its own chair factory to make chairs for the cinemas. Nanta speaks with pride, too, about the perfect slope of Scala and the arrangement of seats that ensures an unblocked view for every moviegoer.
One point that Chulalongkorn University has raised as part of its push to renovate the area is safety. Most buildings in Siam Square, including Lido and Scala, are old and not in perfect condition given the growing density of people and new structures in Siam Square. Though this has nothing to do with the safety standards of the Apex cinemas, it's worth remembering that Siam Theatre and the original Lido were destroyed by fire _ the former during the political protest in 2010 and the latter in an accident in 1993, which compelled Apex to rebuild the place as a multiplex.
"We're ready to adapt should Chula have any new requirements," says Nanta. "Actually, we have always adapted. We watched other stand-alone cinemas fall, one by one, over the years, and it's inevitable that we had to look at ourselves and review what we should do to survive _ not only to survive, but to continue to serve our fans, who've always been so lovely to us.
"We're the original multiplex: with Siam, Lido and Scala, we had a group of cinemas surrounded by a shopping area, which is exactly what we know a multiplex to be today. When we started showing alternative movies around seven years ago, it was because we wanted to adapt the taste of new moviegoers, and to find a niche in the market. The only thing that we haven't adapted much is the ticket price. Now we still charge only 100 baht, it's the cheapest in Bangkok, and we have no plan to raise it."
There's another thing, however, that Apex may not be quick to adapt, or to be precise, adopt: digital cinema. At the increasing popularity of DCP _ film projection from digital files and hard drive rather than from 35mm print _ Apex steadfastly practises the tradition of film as film, those reels manually loaded into the projector and through which atomised light dances and constructs moving pictures.
"Perhaps that will become another strength of Apex," says Nanta. "We will remain non-digital, because with digital, it means we have to raise the price, and that means our customers, with the same money in their pockets, will be able to see fewer films. We want to keep providing variety, and we believe we'll still be valuable despite the change that will happen all around us."
