An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

In the ear­ly 1900s, the Princes Build­ing (now the site of Na­pa) was the venue for the first mov­ing pic­tures shown in the is­land. It was a new­fan­gled form of en­ter­tain­ment that at­tract­ed the imag­i­na­tion and at­ten­tion of those who could af­ford the four shillings ad­mis­sion price (then a large sum).These ear­ly shows mere­ly con­sist­ed of a se­ries of stop-mo­tion still pho­tographs which were rapid­ly flipped in se­quence be­fore a gaslight pro­jec­tor. The end re­sult was a mov­ing pic­ture.Oth­er films were shown, in­clud­ing the in­no­v­a­tive First Men on the Moon. Nat­u­ral­ly, ow­ing to the ad­mis­sion price and the lo­ca­tion, the ear­ly screen­ings were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly the pre­serve of the up­per class­es.It was at the Ari­ma Sa­van­nah (now the Ari­ma Velo­drome) in 1906, that an open air show­ing of The Great Train Rob­bery took place, along with one of the ear­li­est movies ever made, The Pas­sion Play of Ober­am­mer­gau, which was pro­duced in 1898. Oth­er pi­o­neer­ing screen­ings took place in San Fer­nan­do, where the lodge known as the Al­bany Hall be­came a Fri­day and Sat­ur­day night cin­e­ma. A lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur laid out a cloth screen sur­face and pro­ject­ed mov­ing im­ages which were an in­stant hit at an ad­mis­sion fee of two shillings.

An­oth­er pi­o­neer was Vin­cente Al­bert Mar­ry­at, who ran an open air the­atre called the Al Fres­co on Sun­days at the Queen's Park Oval.On Feb­ru­ary 2, 1911, Trinida­di­ans got their first taste of the new­fan­gled tech­nol­o­gy of mov­ing pic­tures. The Lon­don Elec­tric The­atre was con­struct­ed at the cor­ner of Baden Pow­ell Street and French Street in Wood­brook, built by Mar­cus and Regi­nald Davis. The open­ing was ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed, as crowds braved a rainy evening to see the first show, en­ti­tled The World Be­fore Your Eyes. The mati­nee was a se­ries of stills, rapid­ly flipped be­fore a pro­jec­tor to give the il­lu­sion of mo­tion. The rates charged for ad­mis­sion were for the gen­der and age class­es, and not for house or bal­cony, as with lat­er cin­e­mas.An im­por­tant func­tion of the Lon­don Elec­tric was that it brought news and cur­rent af­fairs to Trinida­di­ans dur­ing World War I. From 1914-18, mati­nee shows were sup­ple­ment­ed by im­ages of the hor­rors of war­fare rag­ing in Eu­rope at the time. The cin­e­ma al­so did its part for the war ef­fort by hold­ing sev­er­al fundrais­ers to as­sist sol­diers in the trench­es of Flan­ders.

For the first five years of its ex­is­tence, mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment was pro­vid­ed by Li­onel "Lanky" Be­las­co on the pi­ano. He was born in Duke Street in 1881 and grew up in Bel­mont.In­spired by his moth­er, who was a con­cert pi­anist in her day, Lanky took to the pi­ano and learned clas­si­cal mu­sic, al­though he of­ten skipped lessons to run away in­to the Bel­mont hills, where he im­bibed African rhythms that lat­er ap­peared in his mu­sic. Lanky was a tal­ent­ed com­pos­er and left the Lon­don Elec­tric in 1916 to part­ner with Doris Legge in open­ing the Olympic The­atre in Bel­mont.

The Lon­don Elec­tric The­atre be­came the As­tor Cin­e­ma in the 1930s, af­ter be­ing ac­quired by cin­e­ma mag­nate Tim­o­thy Roodal. The As­tor con­tin­ued in busi­ness, with a fine art-de­co re­vival build­ing be­ing con­struct­ed in 1946. The As­tor closed for good in 1995 and is now a church.Be­las­co strug­gled fi­nan­cial­ly with the Olympic, but achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess in the Unit­ed States as a record­ing artiste in the 1920s and 30s, when ca­lyp­so was en­joy­ing a vogue pe­ri­od. In the 1930s Be­las­co vis­it­ed Venezuela and re­con­nect­ed with the Latin waltzes he had en­coun­tered in his youth. Among his bet­ter known com­po­si­tions and in­ter­pre­ta­tions were De­pres­sion, Car­menci­ta, and Vi­o­let's Venezue­lan Waltz. Be­las­co is cred­it­ed with over 400 com­po­si­tions, and his mu­sic can still be pur­chased on CD. He died in 1967.

Be­las­co's own words on the found­ing of the Lon­don Elec­tric are thus (ac­cord­ing to Dr Bruce Padding­ton): "An Eng­lish­man came out [to Trinidad] who was in­ter­est­ed in oil and as­phalt. I think his part­ner's moth­er owned a street­car sys­tem [in Eng­land] or some­thing of this kind. He had an in­ter­est in films, silent pic­tures. And he says, 'There's no pic­ture house around here.'

"So there was this boy that I had gone to school with who was sec­re­tary of the or­gan­i­sa­tion that han­dled the busi­ness of these peo­ple, the as­phalt and the oil deal. He said he'd put up a pic­ture house if he could get some­one to run it. He called me and ex­plained that this man want­ed to put up a pic­ture house and would I look af­ter it. So I said, 'Yes.'"