flynn098

Extract from 'In Ons Bloed' compiled by Hilton Biscombe. PUMFLET 'GAIETY' My father, Wilfred Damon, has written down his memories of going to the Gaiety Bioscope, the cinema that once stood in Andringa Street in an area that was known as Die Vlakte in Stellenbosch. Die Vlakte was demolished between 1960 ad 1970 as part of apartheid’s project of separate development and forced removals of racialised people of colour from the centre of Stellenbosch. Wilfred recalls particularly two stories. The one occurred during the earthquake of 1969, where the film, a typical Hollywood action flick of the late 1960s, was interrupted because of the effect of the tremor. At that moment, he writes, fantasy and reality was confused. Patrons ran out of the cinema feeling as if stepping out of the cinema meant stepping inside a real life extraordinary drama of the earthquake and its after effects. The second story that Wilfred writes about concerns the Plaza Bioscope, the cinema that was de...