The Closing of the Cinemas: Helplessness and Heartache in a Changing Age
When a cinema brings down its final curtain, is it a kind of cultural death — or simply the inevitable price of social progress?
When the last projector light goes out, what we say goodbye to is not merely a place; it is the youth of an entire generation. In the first half of 2025, four cinemas closed one after another — Newport Cinema, Newprince Cinema, and the Galaxy Cinema circuit among them — and many cinemas rolled out promotions in the hope of drawing the public back to the big screen. The disappearance of a cinema is like a rupture in our collective memory: the small moments of the past feel as though they have suddenly been taken away, leaving us bereft. An older generation will recall the buzz and longing the cinema once brought to the city; a younger generation will remember the innocent moment of watching a film for the very first time with their parents or friends.
From a psychological perspective, the wave of cinema closures has stirred up people's "sense of loss" (Sense of Loss). This sense of loss does not spring simply from missing a particular place; it is bound up with our longing for the time and the feelings of days gone by. As a vessel of collective memory, the cinema has carried the youth, the romances and the friendships of countless people. When such spaces vanish, people feel a formless emptiness and solitude. This emotional response is closely tied to what psychology calls "nostalgia" (Nostalgia). Nostalgia may be a search for emotional comfort, yet it can equally leave us feeling helpless in the face of all that is changing around us.
Those Years, the Films We Chased Together: The Preciousness and Singularity of Cinema Memories
"We can be nostalgic for an old friend for a while, yet never share a boat again."
To long for times past — to look back on the people and things now gone, the parting of old friends, the passing of family, or some change in the way we live — makes us cherish all the more those moments that can never come again. Longing for the past is not merely a negative emotion; it can also bring warmth, connection, and a sense of life's meaning (Wildschut et al., 2006). It can help us find strength in the present, because past experiences remind us that we have overcome hardship before, and have known happiness too.
Memories are precious because they are not merely a record; they carry, too, an exchange of feeling. Inside the cinema, we shared countless joys and sorrows with friends, family, even strangers. The collective experience of the cinema can strengthen the emotional bonds between people. Many places like to hold nostalgic film screenings precisely in order to create that shared experience — to let audiences relive the happiness and innocence of the past, and to deepen emotional connection through shared memory (St. Lawrence, 2020). The memory of the cinema thus becomes a kind of emotional thread, binding people closely together.
As the later lines of the song go, "for the beautiful light and shadow that moved us, we can carry on" — for all our farewells, we can still hold tight to the beautiful images, each our own.
The Psychology of Nostalgia: Why Does the Past Always Seem So Beautiful?
Nostalgia is, in essence, a complex emotional state, one that gives us a special attachment to times past while prompting us to reflect on the present. According to Cooper's research, nostalgia is a way people reach back into the past and seek psychological comfort when society is undergoing change (Cooper, 2021). Nostalgia can offer emotional solace, helping us find a kind of psychological equilibrium in the face of real-world pressures and challenges.
The psychological mechanism of nostalgia is bound up with the selectivity of memory. Our brains tend to hold on to the beautiful times of the past while overlooking the unpleasant experiences — a tendency known as "rosy retrospection" (Rosy retrospection). Unpleasant or difficult experiences from the past are softened with the passage of time, while happy or meaningful moments are more easily remembered. What we recall, therefore, is often a beautified version of the past.
Reconstructing Memory: How Past Moments Define Our Lives
When we look back on the past, we do not merely relive the scenes of the time; we also assign those moments deeper meaning anew. Psychological research shows that when the human brain processes memory, it does not simply replay past scenes with the precision of a camera; rather, it reinterprets past experiences according to our present emotional state, needs and stage of life (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). This process is called narrative memory reconstruction. For example, a family dinner that seemed ordinary at the time may, as the years pass, be reinterpreted — through the parting of a family member or a turning point in life — as a symbol of family warmth, and may even come to define the "happiness" of our lives.
People actively weave their life experiences into a meaningful story, one that helps them understand themselves and find the value and purpose of their lives. According to the "Life Story Theory" of psychologist Dan P. McAdams (Dan P. McAdams), people assign new meaning to events as they narrate the past, especially memories charged with emotional intensity. In the process, the content of a memory may be embellished or rearranged to fit our self-identity and needs of the moment (McAdams, 2001). What we long for, then, is not the event itself, but the emotion, the relationship, or the value the event symbolises.
The Projection of Collective Feeling: The Social Emotion Stirred by Cinema Closures
The closing of the cinemas is not merely the disappearance of a space; it also symbolises a shift in the structure of social memory. With the rise of online streaming platforms, we are moving from a public space once shared with others towards a private world centred on the individual. At the same time, the cinema is linked to public feeling and culture; its disappearance symbolises a kind of cultural loss, leaving people with a sense of powerlessness as memory is gradually broken up and grows hard to piece together.
What the cinema carries is precisely that feeling within our collective psyche — hard to put into words, yet deeply present. Faced with this attachment, how should we cherish and safeguard it, so that this memory is not diluted by the great tide of the times?
Cherish the Present, and Keep Beautiful Memories Alive
The closing of the cinemas is a genuine cause for regret, yet we can still safeguard Hong Kong's film culture.
TreeholeHK is holding the 【Adam Wong on Adam Wong】Film Sharing Session, inviting director Adam Wong to analyse his own film works. The talk centres on a short film he wrote and directed himself — from scriptwriting, storyboarding and on-set filming to working with actors, editing and sound mixing — explained first-hand by the director, with a detailed account of the inner journey of the creative process. Through this, he passes on knowledge of film creation and production to participants, sharing a director's way of thinking. Through this sharing session, we can not only learn the techniques of filmmaking but also feel the value and meaning of film as a vessel of culture. Let us cherish the present together, and keep beautiful memories alive.
References:
Cooper, Matthew, “Backward glances: The cultural and industrial uses of nostalgia in 2010s Hollywood cinema” (2021). College of Communication Master of Arts Theses. 36. https://via.library.depaul.edu/cmnt/36
Conway, M. A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. Psychological Review, 107(2), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.107.2.261
McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), 100–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
St. Lawrence, E. (2020). The (Live) Cinema of Nostalgia. Spectator, 40(1), 25-34. https://cinema.usc.edu/spectator/40.1/03_StLawrence.pdf
Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 975–993. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975
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