Tainan Minzu Theater

Minzu Theater (民族戲院) was established on the street of the same name in Tainan in 1963. This golden age cinema specialized in Western films and prospered into the 1980s. After a nearby night market was relocated business declined. The owners gambled on an extensive renovation to remain competitive, but for reasons that are not exactly clear the original theater building was only partially demolished in 1988. A high-rise cineplex housing seven screens was built on two-thirds of the footprint of the original theater, leaving a third of the building intact. Unable to resist changing consumer habits, this cineplex was sold to Scholar Multimedia Ltd. (學者電影公司) in 1996 and ultimately went out of business sometime in the early 2000s.

Date CapturedNovember 30th, 2018 at 07:17 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR IIApertureƒ / 9Shutter Speed1/200 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value14.0 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedJune 24th, 2017 at 04:38 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 9Shutter Speed1/320 secFocal Length52.0 mmISO200Exposure Value14.7 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Sometime later the former cineplex was renovated into Yuda Cram School (育達補習班), which continues to occupy the site into the 2020s. For a period of time it was still possible to see characters for Minzu Theater on the top of the third of the building still standing, but additional reconstruction efforts consigned this trace to the dustbin of history. Nowadays only the twin statues of Atlas flanking the high-rise indicate this was ever a place of entertainment.

Date CapturedNovember 30th, 2018 at 07:16 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR IIApertureƒ / 6.3Shutter Speed1/100 secFocal Length48.0 mmISO200Exposure Value12.0 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

In an interesting twist of fate, Minzu Theater’s design was also used for the now-abandoned Zicheng Theater (自成大戲院) in Yunlin, also documented in this project.