Being a projectionist in Mombasa, as elsewhere, was considered a coveted job in the days of celluloid 35mm film, and before the mass adoption of VHS and DVD. Projectionists were unionized with assured annual salary increases. At the Regal they put in around 25hrs of work per week! It was great if you liked watching movies, worked independently and took pride in an error free movie run. On the other hand, it could get tedious being stuck in one room for 3hrs especially in Mombasa's heat.
Such was the life of the 2 Asian projectionists at the Regal Theatre Mombasa during the 1970s. One was a senior person with the highest salary that was close to the manager's salary! Moshin was more than a projectionist. He had taught himself over the years to fix anything electrical and mechanical and kept the projectors in good working condition. He thrived in his day time position at Kaluworks. More on this below!!
The other projectionist was just that ...a projectionist. The projectionist's room became a miraa paradise for him as the years went by. He would always come to work with his package of miraa for the evening. Just as coffee perks one up, he was alert for work and ensured a smooth film run!!
There were some exceptions!
On one evening an electrical wire shorted in the area housing the reflector and carbon rods. There was a short flame out. In the projectionist’s haste to act he dumped sand into the projector, to the ire of the senior projectionist, who spent the next day painstakingly cleaning and removing the sand!
Then there was the night when a well-known Hollywood movie was playing and they missed playing reel 3. They only realized their error of showing 4 reels instead of 5 when they movie ended early!! They quietly went home!! No one realized or complained about the error! But patrons surely must have been confused about the story line!
The usual 5.45pm evening show went on during Ramadan with almost no Muslim patrons. The projectionists would climb the ladder steps to the roof ledge above the projectionist room (and casbah restaurant) to determine the time to break the fast. And after this time was determined they would have a feast of the best homemade Mombasa foods!!
In addition to the glass windows through which the film image could be projected there were 2 glass windows that could be opened for the projectionist to stick his head into the auditorium so that the sound could be adjusted. One day an irate patron on the balcony threw an apple aiming for the projectionist’s head. The annoyed projectionist discontinued sticking his head and relied on staff using a switch by the stalls doors that was connected to a bell in the projection’s room. One ring meant reduce the volume. Two rings meant increase the volume.
There used to be animated discussions on many movie scenes. I remember a discussion on the Ten Commandments and what Ramses meant (after he returned to Nefertiti following the partition of the Red Sea and in answer to her as to where Moses was) when he said ‘his God...his God’!!
The Kenya Film Corporation kept on nudging the theatre to train and hire African projectionists. 17 years after Uhuru 2 Africans were finally hired! Both were recommended by the existing projectionists who faced no loss in wages and in fact consequently had lighter duties! Of course, everything worked out well.
Expertise on how to repair the projector equipment was an issue. In the early 70’s a maverick projectionist in his attempts to learn how everything worked dismantled a rectifier but could not re-install it right! And the cinema was stuck with a projector that overheated and caused a crack to appear in a new reflector in a month or so!
There was a disconnect between management/owners and the projectionists. The former, as compared to the latter, did not see how beneficial it was to update the projectors with new parts including sprockets, reflectors etc. and how beneficial trained projectionists were. Additionally given the owners' perception of the political situation and Africanization, there was little incentive to maintain the equipment. They viewed the glass as half empty and were in a frenzy to ‘milk the cow without feeding the cow’!
Things appeared to be very different for the senior projectionist Moshin at his day time job at Kaluworks! There the Asian owned company viewed the glass as half full, ‘fed their cow and in fact wanted a herd of cows’!! Perhaps some of the aggressive Africanization policies had not touched them! Sometime in the late 70’s Moshin was shipped off to Hong Kong to spend a month learning how to install and repair new machinery on order. He came looking thinner, complaining that all he could tolerate was rice and noodles! He invited me for a tour of Kaluworks new factory premises close to Moi International Airport. In fact, it was almost on the flight path slightly off from the Mombasa Nairobi highway or thereabouts. Instead of importing aluminum sheets to manufacture pots and pans, this innovative company decided to import Aluminum ingots from Kitimat, BC, smelter them to manufacture the aluminum sheets locally! Kenya's industrialization was on the move! It is interesting to note this company that started in 1929 (Regal started in 1931) is thriving...see Home | Kaluworks Limited
As the senior projectionist Moshin progressed in his day time job at Kaluworks he reached a point where he quit from the Regal. One ignores the technical staff at their own peril! Months later Regal’s projectors broke down, could not be repaired until the staff begged Moshin to come and fix the projectors!
The projectionists religiously at the end of each night’s show pulled down the metal shutters over the windows facing into the auditorium. The objective was to avoid any damage to the projection room during any fire overnight. Well, as some may know, in September 1985 a ferocious fire destroyed the Regal but saved the projectionist room. After all that the Gaumont Kalee projectors that had operated solidly for 30 years were sold for a measly shs 10,000!!
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