Kuwait's Drive-In Cinemas of the 1970s
Words: Ghada Al-Bahar
The Kuwait of the early to mid-1970’s was a place of infinite optimism, or so it seemed then at least. The dramatic changes in education, healthcare and infrastructure of the sixties were now giving way to artistic and recreational imports. James Brown, Boney M and Andy Warhol were amongst many who were featuring in the cultural playground of the country at the time. However, to my ten-year-old self and to so many of my generation, nothing, absolutely nothing, beat a night out at one of Kuwait’s two drive-in cinemas.
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On June 8, 1974 the first of these two drive-in cinemas opened along the Sixth Ring Road and it was the first of its kind in the Arab world. The cinema could host around 300 cars and there were also around that same number of open-air seats on the roof of the cafeteria in case you preferred not to watch the film in your car. The second, Al-Ahmadi Drive-in Cinema, opened a few years later in 1980 and operated on the same premise as the first.
Just before sunset on a Thursday, six or seven times a year, my older siblings, cousins, friends and I would bundle into the family’s golden Ninety Eight Oldsmobile, a ridiculously capacious car by today’s standards, and head off to watch the latest release at Cinema Alsyarat (literally “The Cinema for Cars” in Arabic ).
Pulling up at the entrance booth, we would be given a ticket with the number and location of our parking spot and waved through to an usher whose flashlight guided us to where we needed to be. Tickets were purchased for the car and driver as one and then single tickets for any additional passengers.
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The car would park adjacent to a stand, quite similar to a petrol pump, from which a speaker and – this being Kuwait – an air-conditioner would extend via two hoses into the car. These were then hooked onto the inside of the slightly rolled down car window. The sound quality from this solitary speaker was already very muffled but it was made substantially worse by the dreadful din coming from the air-conditioning, which in any case cooled in name only.
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We always made sure we arrived early, giving us plenty of time to stroll casually to the cafeteria for sunflower seeds, chocolate and popcorn served in small, oil-stained brown paper bags.
Back in the car, seating was allocated on a strictly hierarchical basis. Older siblings got the front seats, with more legroom and a better view of the cinema screen. The younger attendees would be relegated to the back where our shorter bodies meant that we spent the entirety of the film literally sitting on the edge of our seats, our heads perched on the back of the front ones trying to get a decent view of the film. Because of this, fights often broke out between front and back row when an older sibling’s hair was accidentally “touched” or when a younger one’s proximate “loud” breathing became too annoying.
I have very little recollection of the films we watched at the Drive-In Cinema; it is the actual outing itself, the communal experience of being at that cinema that remains indelibly etched in my memory. An entire parking lot of cars tooting their horns at the defeat of a villain or flashing their headlights when star-crossed lovers were finally united, always brought on an explosion of laughter and cheering in the car. There is one film however, that I do distinctly remember – The Abba Movie circa 1978. In the privacy of our own car, all inhibitions were flung aside as we belted out the entire musical score of the film, shimmying our shoulders and wiggling our bums to the familiar and beloved tunes.
Both cinemas closed for a few years after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait but were up and running again by the mid 1990s. However by that time, attendance began to wane and sadly by 2008 both had ceased operating and were demolished a few years later.
A few years ago I came across two fabulous painted photographs by the Kuwaiti artist Mohamed Al Kouh, from his series Tomorrow’s Past, that beautifully capture the sense of loss that I and many of my contemporaries felt at the demolition of the Drive-In Cinemas. In the first photograph we see the back of the driven-in cinema screen – a dominating structure perched on claw-like supports. In the second, it is the front of the screen that is shown. Across this screen, in lipstick red, is poignantly painted the word “Al-Nihaya” – literally and symbolically THE END.
