The cinema opened in 1967 with an Indian film, and Bakyt Mamatov, then nineteen, was the boy who carried the reels up the iron stairs. By 1975 he ran the booth. By 1990 he ran the booth, the ticket window and, on Sundays, the buffet.
"People think a film is a picture. A film is a smell: hot dust, lamp, vinegar from the reels. I can smell a good print from the street."
The last real reel ran in 2006. After that the cinema showed films from a DVD player connected to a hired projector, and then it showed nothing. The building belongs to someone in the city who means to make it a shopping centre. He has meant to for nine years.
Mamatov comes on Tuesdays. He opens the booth, wipes the lenses of the two Soviet projectors, turns the motors by hand so they don't seize. "If someone brings a film, we must be ready," he says, and laughs, and does not quite laugh.
On the way down he shows me the wall where every projectionist since 1967 has written his name in pencil. There are four names. His is the third. The fourth is his son, who worked here for one summer, in 2004, and now drives a lorry to Almaty.
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