Locating the Cultural Geography of Kolkata's Cinema Para: From Single-Screen Film Theatres to Cinemallisation

This paper explores the cultural geography of Kolkata’s Cinema Para, a historic neighborhood of single-screen cinemas, to examine how these spaces have been transformed from vibrant public arenas into marginalized sites within the neoliberal urban landscape. Through ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and archival research, the study theorizes the concept of ‘cinemallisation’, the displacement of traditional theatres by mall-based multiplexes, as a manifestation of spatial dispossession. Drawing on frameworks of spatial justice (Soja), cultural memory (Assmann), and neoliberal urbanism (Harvey), the analysis reveals that the decline of single-screen cinemas constitutes more than infrastructural obsolescence; it represents the systematic erasure of affordable, collective cultural infrastructures. This research positions Cinema Para as a contested site where memory, class, and cultural citizenship intersect, and argues that the loss of these theatres signals a broader erosion of democratic urban life and of subaltern access to public space.