The ancient Greek philosopher Plato once told an allegory of the cave: a group of people are chained inside a cave from birth, with their backs to the light, able to see only the shadows cast by a fire on the wall, believing those shadows to be the whole of the world.
This hybrid documentary and installation work imagines the cinema as a cave of this kind. Throughout the mid- to late twentieth century, local cinemas of all sizes spread across China. Some were even converted from underground air-raid shelters left over from the Cold War period, and for a time were among the most popular places to watch a film. After the 1990s, with the rise of television and videotapes, most of these cinemas gradually disappeared from urban and rural landscapes, leaving almost no written record behind.
Centred around an abandoned theatre in Hangzhou built during the rise of socialist culture, the project explores how cinematic spaces continue to survive through personal memory and imagination even as they physically disappear. The work reflects on the cinema not simply as a place for watching films, but as a collective cultural environment shaped by shared spectatorship.
