Jorge Alexánder Cegarra and Yéxica Andreína Ortiz de Cegarra, a couple with two girls, once owned a pizza restaurant in the municipality of Ayacucho in the city of San Juan de Colón, the third most populous city –with some 100,000 inhabitants– in the state of Táchira in Venezuela, which borders Colombia to the southwest.
The hyperinflation, which reached in a rate of 7,374% in 2019, made the prices of flour and other products necessary for making pizzas unaffordable; the precariousness of services such as gas also made it difficult for the business to operate. Currently, regions in the interior of Venezuela suffer more from the fragility of services.
The couple shut down the pizzeria. They then used the same premises for garage sales: they brought appliances from Caracas, fixed them, sold them –they got to sale up to 50 refrigerators. But the de facto dollarization in Caracas made this business unprofitable as well.
Then, over the months, they decided to pursue a long-standing idea: they went on making San Juan de Colón only movie theater. They succeeded in less than three months, to open in on December 1st, 2019, in the same place that was once a pizzeria and a garage sale.
Ortiz and Cegarra told their story to Daniela Gonzalez, from the newspaper La Nacion, in Táchira.
“The decision was that I would leave the country, because there was not enough money for the four of us to go, and if we left, it would be more difficult; but the ideas came to my mind, I didn’t want the months to go by without seeing my daughters and my wife; in my mind there was always the idea of making a movie theater in Colon, but the lack of money complicated things,” Cegarra told González. Cegarra’s mother had already migrated to Argentina.
Cinelandia is the name of the cinema. It is a small and familiar cinema, with capacity for 38 people. It offers three shows daily, during daylight, at 10 am, 1 pm and 4 pm, which are hours more suitable for personal safety.
The couple had the family’s support, according to González’s report. They lent them money.
Cegarra and Ortiz started out in the chiveras, as the warehouses for vehicle parts and other used goods are called in Venezuela. They went to chiveras in La Fría, one of the main cities in Táchira, in search of seats for public transport units to turn them into the seats of their cinema.
“We had to walk a long way, the heat of La Fría penetrated our feet; when we found them, they cost us 700,000 Colombian pesos [about $210] and those who helped us carry them asked us how much they paid us to carry that ‘dirt’; the seats were quite damaged, but we fixed everything we bought that was deteriorated, so we didn’t worry, there were people who told us we were crazy,” the newspaper article quotes the couple.
They paid in Colombian pesos instead of bolivars, yes, because, at least since 2017, that currency circulates in Táchira, also de facto as in dollars in Caracas, for the purchase of food, medicine and products of all kinds. The peso is stronger than the bolivar: a Colombian peso costs at least 22 bolivars. In fact, Cinelandia’s fees are in pesos: Monday through Wednesday, the show costs 1000 pesos (about 30 cents); Thursday and Friday, 1500 pesos (about 45 cents); Saturday and Sunday, 2000 pesos (about 60 cents).
Ortiz and Cegarra continued to set up the cinema. One aunt, Daniela González writes in the piece for La Nación, made the seat covers for them, while another relative did the remodeling of the premises.
“When people saw that we were knocking down where the pizzeria was, they told us that we were crazy, asked us why were going to damage the ceramics and what those high steps were for, and I told them that I was going to make a pigsty, but when I told them the truth, that I was going to make a movie, they laughed at us,” Cegarra said.
“We didn’t have the money, everything was practically borrowed,” added Ortiz.
They made the four-meter screen, adapted the seats with the tables of some bunk beds, received financing for the electric plants – due to the precariousness of the electric service – and the air conditioners.
“When we were about to open, we lacked the most important thing, the popcorn machines and the investment in candy; a few days before the opening, we sold the car and were able to buy what was missing,” said Yéxica Ortiz to Daniela González.
Cinelandia was inaugurated on Dec. 1, 2019, at the 10 a.m. screening of the film “Breakthrough.” Demand is high today, so tickets must be reserved.
The couple says that the cinema will continue to grow: they hope to make a second floor to have a waiting room. They have already presented magic shows that will continue for the next weekends, and they want it to be a space for more film-forums.