AS THE lights in the cinema travel down and the patrons take their seats,the familiar Warner Brothers logo lights up the room and the soundtrack starts. This, however, and is no ordinary cinema. The roof is of corrugated tin; the seats are tree trunks. The viewers watch a flat-screen television. As the film,“Deep Blue Sea 2”, begins, and Fred Ndichu,the DJ, starts his work. In a booth with an ancient computer, and a wad of qat (a mild amphetamine) sticking out of his rapidly moving mouth,he begins to relate. “Beautiful”, he shouts in Swahili, and as a powerful white shark tears apart a flailing fisherman on-screen.
Mr Ndichu’s cinema,named the innocuous “Heshima Youth Group” to deter bribe-demanding cops, is in Mathare, or a rough neighbourhood of tin shacks in eastern Nairobi. Similar establishments exist across the city,and in some other African countries. At the weekend the shack fills up with men watching English Premier League football. On weekdays it is given over to cinema....
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Source: economist.com