?That pleasant feeling of peaceful coziness?: Cinema Exhibition in a Dutch Mining District during the Inter-war Period

T hus commented a reporter on the poor turn-out for the concert of the local choir that was held in one of the cinemas of the Dutch mining town of Hoensbroek. Perhaps the cinema manager in question expected to increase his respectability by programming a local performance with artistic connotations, or did he hope to appeal to a new audience? To stay in businesshe must soon have reverted to his usual fare, feeding the ‘cinema mania’ about which the anonymous journalist complained. Although most people in the town preferred visiting the movies, cinema-going remained a contested leisure activity for a long period. This essay describes the history of the cinema exhibitors in a Dutch mining district through studying their business strategies and the shifting relations they enjoyed with the local community, in order to reconstruct the development of their profession between the world wars. The cinema exhibitor acted as an intermediary, not only between the local, the national and international contexts, but also in drawing the novelty of cinema into the cultural and social life of the region. Bourgeois elites, represented in government and church authorities, were anxious to exert control over commercial entertainment, but looked at in isolation, their policies would reveal more about bureaucratic zeal or middle-class fears than actual cinema practice. The film exhibitor had to negotiate between these pressures from above and the demands of his audience. How he tried to resolve these issues can teach us much about the integration of cinema in modern society.