Swakop Has a Cinema

It’s been two months since Ster-Kinekor closed in Windhoek. Four since ‘Catching Fire’, ‘Thor’, ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ and ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ came and went in cinemas all over the world and Windhoekers watched them whiz by in a cloud of reviews, spoilers and Facebook updates.

Meanwhile, in Swakopmund, cinephiles are living a charmed life. A stone’s throw from Atlanta Cinema, Namibia’s very first 3D cinema and the only functioning one in the country, Swakopmund movie goers enjoy the latest films from around the globe in a state-of-the art cinema that smells enticingly like popcorn, soft drinks and dreams come true.

This is why we are standing in the lobby of Atlanta Cinema not so much silently awestruck but squealing.

We have come for the Namibian Annual Music Awards (NAMAs) but instead of rushing to check-in to our accommodation or see the sea, we make a beeline for the bioscope. Just to check that it is really there. Really working. And really showing ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (2014). In 3D.

We’re making incredulous noises, running down the short hall to gawk at the old movie camera and pressing our snouts to the glass of the old time popcorn machine but the old man at the snacks counter doesn’t shush us. Perhaps he has had Windhoekers in there before and chalks it up to brain addling as a result of the fumes emanating from Namibia Breweries.

We don’t know.

But what we do know is that we’ll be back. Before we head back to the cinematic wasteland we call home. Though it takes some determined scheduling and a dinner hastily shoved down our throats, we return to Atlanta for the 20h30 show on Sunday night.

The line is long and we are worried we won’t get seats as the cinema is very small but when we eventually get to the counter we are handed some cool 3D glasses and a ticket to see ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ with no fuss and friendly face.

We rush in and take our seats and we are thrilled by the 3D effects which make it seem like Spider-Man has swung right into the room and is hovering above us. We are amazed by all of this for about 15 minutes, we feel a little teary because we are finally in a cinema after months of starvation and we laugh and glance at each other with more gusto than the movie deserves and then… we fall asleep.

Not all together.

Our tolerance for boredom varies and, out of the four of us, I stay awake until the very end but succumb to ennui for five minutes in the last fifteen minutes during a fight scene.

Characters die and we don’t care.

Andrew Garfield cracks lukewarm jokes as the woebegone web slinger while Jamie Foxx channels his inner Netman as the villainous Electro and we can’t be bothered because ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (2014) is the most boring thing that ever happened.

Atlanta Cinema, however, remains remarkable.

For its friendly service, its private ownership, quaint old time décor, spotless cinemas but, most importantly, for existing.

– @marth__vader on Twitter or martha@namibian.com.na