Projector and TV

In a corner of the former Marina Picture Palace in Rosebery, a film projector and a vintage television set were left where they stood. A brown partition wall with blue-painted moulding above divides them. Two small speakers rest on top of the television. A black cable winds across the debris-strewn floor toward a bright doorway. The television screen holds a faint reflection of a staircase beyond the frame. Decades of accumulated grime coat everything. The Marina Picture Palace opened on 28 May 1927, designed by architect William de Putron, who was also a member of the consortium that built and operated it alongside builder William Henry Rumble and cinema entrepreneur Eric Christensen. De Putron had left his architectural partnership the year before; the Marina was his own project. Christensen, who held NSW Exhibitor's Licence No. 1, placed a gold sovereign in the brickwork during construction. The building passed through several operators over the following decades: the Ward brothers from 1935, then Mascot Theatres Pty Ltd under Snider and Dean from January 1939, then the Louis Film Company from 1967. Chris Louis purchased the Marina in honour of his wife, whose name was also Marina. The Louis family specialised in continental and Greek-language films in the era before SBS television. When the Marina closed as a cinema on 8 February 1984, the stalls area was converted into a video and DVD shop. The projection box contents were removed. Cinema seats were sold for re-use in other Inter-War theatres. The video shop closed around 2002. The projector in this photograph was not removed with the rest of the projection equipment. It remained in the building alongside the television set, the partition wall, and the cable on the floor. The Marina Picture Palace is the only surviving pre-World War Two theatre in the former Botany Bay local government area. The building was vacant and derelict when photographed in 2019.