July 22, 2005
By Lucille Davie
TWO Troyeville residents plan to put the sparkle back into an old cinema in the suburb, hoping to create a centre for artists and craftspeople and develop an outlet for African films and documentaries.
The Gem Theatre, built in 1940 and shuttered for the past six years, has been bought by print and film journalist Guy Oliver and filmmaker Ethel Williams-Abrahamse, who intend turning it into a multi-functional space.
"Ninety-nine percent of African films are not being shown," says Oliver. The major chains don't show these films, as they have less popular appeal than European and American films.
The two hope to promote the local film industry actively and are in contact with the Gauteng Film Office in this regard.
They have renamed the theatre the Gem Bioscope, in fond memory of the days when the Gem was an active bioscope, showing movies like Samson & Delilah, or endless westerns.
The Red Line
The cinema closed in 1976 and has been used since then for a range of purposes - a junk shop, a porn shop, fabric wholesalers, an auction mart, a second-hand shop and an antique shop.
Oliver and Williams-Abrahamse have spent the past year clearing out almost 30 years of accumulated usage - retail shop leftovers so dense they concealed the floor; removing a mezzanine floor that was added after 1976; and stripping the ceiling and clearing out decades of dust.
"We've removed 30 tons of bricks," Oliver says.
The partners have also bought a Victorian house, built in 1902, in Roberts Avenue, across the road. It was a squatter ghetto targeted for demolition.
Their house used to be called the Widow's House, a name earned during the South African War when women used to stand on the stoep, scanning the valley for their husbands' return.
It has been renovated and its original wooden floors and doors gleam again. The original green roof and white plaster walls have been restored. It has been given a new façade, with a striking wrought iron fence and gate created by metal artist John Molteno.
They have painted the eastern wall of the house a cheerful, fire-engine red, a jab at the fact that banks have red-lined the suburb.
Oliver and Williams-Abrahamse have even called the house The Red Line.
They intend creating an arts café, a metal art and photographic gallery and a crafts shop, in the house. It will also be a venue for craft workshops.
Gem cinema
The cinema is a large, imposing bright yellow building with Art Deco features, on the corner of Roberts Avenue and Albemarle Street. The foyer opens into a large banked, double-volume auditorium, with a gallery. The partners intend turning it into several function rooms.
Using a dry wall, the spacious gallery will become the cinema. The adjoining projection room will become a reading and video room. Seating in the cinema, for 100 people, will be on comfortable couches.
Downstairs the auditorium will be turned into an art gallery and the stage will become a restaurant. The original back wall that accommodated the screen will be partly broken through to allow the restaurant to project outside on a deck, overlooking the multi-angled rooftops of Troyeville.
This will also allow light into the space. A deck walkway will link the restaurant and the gallery cinema.
Multi-purpose uses are planned for the art gallery space. It will act as a meeting place for the local community, a corporate venue and a function room.
Behind the projection room is a turbine room, where electricity for the building was produced. This has already undergone renovation, with piping and metal work stripped out and a kitchen fitted.
It is now referred to as the Middle Room Breakfast Club, and with its pitched ceiling, makes for a creative space. Oliver likes to refer to it as the "mind your head room".
African Roof Bar
A small rooftop space that offers 360º views of the city and the eastern suburbs of Joburg is the piece de resistance - the African Roof Bar.
The view of the city and Troyeville rooftops from the African Roof Bar
Plans include attracting advertisers to the space, visible from the Observatory ridge across the valley.
In addition to the bioscope, the centre will offer cinema literacy programmes, rehearsal space for theatre productions, and a fringe theatre venue, a venue for poetry reading, story telling, talks and lectures, networking space for emerging and established artists, and youth support programmes.
The cinema dates back to a time when suburbs had independent cinemas not located in faceless shopping malls. There were the Curzon and Clarendon in Hillbrow, the Adelphi and Grand in Rosettenville, the Astra and Royal in Orange Grove, the Odeon and Parysia in Rosebank, the Rex in Greenside, the Ascot and Palace in Turffontein, the Albert and Gaiety in Braamfontein, and the Scala in Melville.
This harks back to the days of Isadore William Schlesinger, an insurance salesman and subsequently a theatre and cinema entrepreneur who came to South Africa as a penniless 17-year-old from New York in 1894.
In 1913 he established the African Theatres Trust, the forerunner of African Consolidated Theatres, and had a monopoly of the cinema and film industry in the country for some time.
Living in Troyeville
Oliver and Williams-Abrahamse enthuse about living in Troyeville, where they have been for the past 10 years, saying what a happy community it is. The suburb dates back to 1889, when the first stands were sold, just three years after the town was founded.
"People park their cars and walk around Troyeville," says Williams-Abrahamse, waving at a neighbour walking by.
It is a Bohemian, old left community with a colourful history. Mahatma Gandhi lived with his family in Albemarle Street in the early 1900s; academic and anti-apartheid campaigner David Webster was murdered outside his home in Eleanor Street; the notorious robbers the Foster Gang lived in the area, and hid out in the nearby Kensington cave, where they committed suicide; popular musician Gito Baloi lived in Troyeville until his murder in 2004; until recently paparazzi columnist Gwen Gill lived in the suburb, as did singer Jennifer Ferguson.
It's a community of artists, crafters and "serial planters", people who have impulsively moved into the property of The Red Line and popped indigenous plants into the rocky gardens.
But it is a neglected suburb, with many houses taken over by slumlords, and many of the charming Victorian houses have become rundown and dilapidated.
Funding
As always with a project like this, Oliver and Williams-Abrahamse need money. "We have used all our savings, and now live in overdraft," says Oliver.
It will take another R50 000 to complete the finer details of The Red Line before opening it, but even that amount is not available. With funding, they could have the cinema operational in six weeks' time. They estimate that R1,4-million is needed.
The duo have named their enterprise the GemBioscope Contemporary Art Centre, which they define as a centre "driven by arts and culture through the provision of galleries, cinema, education, creativity, community, employment creation and youth development".
They hope too that the centre will be a catalyst for regeneration in one of the city's oldest suburbs.
In particular, they want the project to benefit the local Troyeville community. If all goes according to plan, they will create 20 full-time jobs and 20 frequent casual jobs.
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