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. Allegedly.

Did The Projector die from its relationship with distributors?

It is significant that mainstream news reported The Projector's largest creditor is a film distribution company, Overseas Movie (Private) Ltd. Overseas Movie used to own and operate its own cinema chain, including Golden Cinema in Golden Mile Tower, which was ultimately refurbished into The Projector and Carnival Cinemas. As Golden Mile Tower is a strata development, this means that Overseas Movie is in all likelihood the landlord of the premises of The Projector. Overseas Movie seems to have become a film distributor after its exit from the cinema business, without a single Singapore distributorship credit to its name according to imdb.com. In this case, Occam's Razor may be applied liberally, but critically.

Still from Goodbye, Dragon Inn

The current arrangement in Singapore's cinema 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, yet no other independent distributor in Singapore shows signs of going under. Was The Projector an exhibitor by proxy? Was it bankrolled by its largest creditor, a distributor on paper and actual landlord, who were the ones who threw in the towel on its behalf?

How does any serious business owe its distributor and landlord 12 months rent without being issued a single letter of credit, and still complain about larger trends putting it out of business?

Did The Projector die because it's time?

But why would an independent distributor and landlord throw in the towel on behalf of The Projector?

There are signs that the industry in Singapore is unsustainable, with each exhibitor making their own 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 independent distributors and landlords not want to offload their costs and risks of licensing to streamers?