ABSTRACT
Ravi Vasudevan suggests that we pay regard to the institution of the Indian cinema ‘as a form of regular, normalized public congregation, sometimes assuming great symbolic functions’, but at the same time we need to keep in mind that the cinema hall is also an ‘everyday space: composed of the hall, its internal organization of foyer, auditorium, seating and the projected film, [with a] public presence, as in its façade, advertisements, marquees, hoardings’ (2003). Critically, Vasudevan also prompts us to ‘see this space in relation to a broader space, in the market, near factories, schools, offices blocks, in a mall, in residential areas’ and to interrogate ‘how it is located in the depth of this space or on its margins, near main arterial thoroughfares, linking one space to another’ (2003). Needless to say, the spatial distribution of leisure facilities within the urban environment has a major impact upon how people move around their city, while the particularity of each location has an equally critical affect upon how (and by whom) this leisure infrastructure is accessed.
