Should Singapore still mourn the loss of The Projector?

It has been exactly a month since the sudden closure of indie and second-run cinema operator The Projector. The closure may have provoked widespread despair and outrage online, however performative or overwrought, but for the sake of public education this discussion must now move beyond narratives marked by self-regarding romanticism, naive sentimentality, and uninformed anti-capitalism.

What different things can we learn if, for example, we took a production of culture perspective? What if we treat watching an indie or foreign film in a shabby chic cinema as an end result of the interplay between organisational structure, industry culture, market forces, audience preferences, and contractual agreements and unwritten norms within the wider movie industry? That is: What does it really take to screen a movie in a cinema? And if a cinema operator like The Projector fails, whose fault is it really?

Woud've been appropriate and poetic, but
The Projector didn't end its run with a screening of Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Did The Projector die from Singapore's high rent prices?

Claims that high rent prices are to blame seem comically uninformed, especially coming from self-described fans and supporters of The Projector. After all, the true niche of The Projector lies in its adaptation to Singapore's high rent prices! The Projector swooped in at short notice when sizeable tenants defaulted, cancelled, or even abandoned their leases, to presumably pay a discounted rent rate for a short period. These ended up as The Projector's pop-up cinemas at Riverside Point, The Cathay,  and Cineleisure over the last 6 years of its 10-year existence.

Another key evidence to refute this narrative would be The Projector's creditors list. Unlike MM2, The Projector's largest creditors were film distribution companies like Overseas Movie (Private) Ltd, the banks, and the founders of The Projector. Not in the list of creditors, with monies owed: a single landlord.

Did The Projector die from its relationship with distributors?

It is a significant finding that The Projector's largest creditor is a film distribution company, Overseas Movie (Private) Ltd. Not because Overseas Movie used to operate its own cinema chain in the days before multiplexes in Singapore. Or that Overseas Movie seems to have become a stealth film distributor, some years after its exit from the cinema business. But that The Projector would owe any money at all to a film distributor.

Still from Goodbye, Dragon Inn

In the 2000s, at the tail-end of Singapore's multiplex building boom and mall expansion in the high street of Orchard Rd, the oversupply of cinema halls resulted in exhibitors directly competing with each other by distributing a surfeit of foreign, indie, arthouse titles (tentpole movies and blockbusters were distributed by the studios themselves) — and making record losses. The current arrangement in the industry allows exhibitors to offload risks and losses to small, theoretically independent distributors who presumably have the incentive and discipline to answer correctly questions like: What films should we bring to Singapore? Is there an audience for this, and how big is it? How many halls should we book to screen these films, and where? And how long should the run be?

Under this arrangement, exhibitors are set up to survive and distributors to make and pay for mistakes. So why would an exhibitor owe so much to a distributor? Significant errors must've been made somewhere. Was The Projector a distributor by proxy? Did the exhibitor make a mistake on what set of films it encouraged or borrowed from distributors to license? Or was it bankrolled by distributors, who were the ones who threw in the towel on its behalf?

Did The Projector die because it's time?

But why would small independent distributors throw in the towel on behalf of The Projector?

There are signs that the industry in Singapore is unsustainable, with each exhibitor making fatally flawed compromises to the moviegoing experience even while admission prices have skyrocketed — The Projector included — and consumers adapting by flocking to the newest halls in the newest malls in the suburbs. The exit of MM2 and The Projector should be viewed as a belated industry correction to the overextension of cineplexes and overbuilding of malls in Singapore of the past 2 decades.

Another still from Goodbye, Dragon Inn

These days, consumers are faced with a tempting proposition to stay home: a moviegoing experience superior or at least equal to the compromises offered by every exhibitor, powered by home entertainment systems that are becoming cheaper every year. There is also the convenience of it all: streaming services offer a much wider, eclectic range of titles with years-long runs, with blockbusters going to streaming barely months after their cinematic release.

Why would small independent distributors not want to offload their costs and risks of licensing to streamers?