The golden age of cinema as entertainment in padang (west sumatra) 1970s-1990s

Cinema is one of the various entertainment that can be enjoyed by people today. Today’s cinema is different from the old cinema because it is more modern with a cinema building that integrates with a shopping center and is equipped with facilities that provide comfort to the audience, while cinemas in the past are still conventional with facilities for spectators and simple film screening technology. From the records of several researchers about cinema, the golden age of cinema occurred in the 1970s and 1990s with indications of the large number of cinemas and the high enthusiasm of the people watching movies to the cinema. This paper revealed the factors that encouraged the popularity of cinema entertainment in the 1970s and 1990s and how this form of popularity took place in Padang City spatial. To answer these problems, a historical analysis is used to reveal the background of events that lead to problems by using a cultural approach. This writing uses historical research methods that focus on collecting written sources through archival studies and literature studies. The sources used are reports from the authorized agency, cinema advertisements in the mass media, movie posters and articles in the mass media. This paper concludes that the factors driving the popularity of cinema as entertainment are influenced by several factors, namely the existence of the community’s need for entertainment after coming out of the tense political and social atmosphere at the local level namely the PRRI (Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia) and communist events, so that entertainment becomes one of the needs for the community. Besides that, the limited entertainment media that is easy and accessible at all times makes the cinema the main entertainment for the community. There is a sense of pride for the audience when it comes to the cinema because the cinema is considered to be a class entertainment for the community. These conditions are used by entrepreneurs by building many cinemas from the city center to the suburbs. The efforts of cinema owners to attract viewers to the cinema are also very interesting through advertisements in local newspapers with vulgar pictures and posters accompanied by ad languages that tend to be excessive.