“Excellent scuba diving and Hollywood films on tap”: The cinema at Guantanamo Bay
Few facilities in modern history have gained as much infamy and notoriety as Guantanamo Bay, which has become the inspiration behind several feature films and documentaries after the detention centre became one of the biggest talking points to emerge in the years following 9/11.
It was first opened as a military prison in January 2002, and since then, almost 800 prisoners have been detained, with nine of them dying while in custody. Established as a focal point of the War on Terror, human rights groups have been in constantly vocal opposition to its mere existence, with former inmates testifying about the horrific conditions they were forced to live under while incarcerated.
There are little more than two dozen detainees still residing within Guantanamo, but the murky world of United States politics has consistently thrown up obstacles in having it cease operations permanently. Given the troubling tales to emerge from within its walls, it hardly seems like the sort of place where people would gather and catch the latest blockbusters on a big screen, but rather incredulously, it has its very own cinema. In fact, there are three of them.
The Downtown Lyceum, Camp Bulkeley Lyceum, and Marine Hill Lyceum are all part of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, and they all predate the detention centre. The Downtown cinema opened in 1957, screens films seven days a week, has a concession stand, and can hold up to 2,500 patrons at any given time.
The Camp Bulkeley was built in 1978 and is also in use for special ceremonies, but it underwent major renovations in 2004, presumably due to the increase of personnel on site. The Marine Hill was constructed at some point during the 1970s and was closed two decades later, but re-opened in 2016 and even carries the latest in digital projection technology.
A senior military figure explained the benefits of having so much variety to Digital Spy, although it was prefaced by the admission that “you might think guarding the most dangerous terrorist suspects in the world is the worst job you can imagine”. Just like any other profession, though, it comes with its own unique set of perks.
For those stationed at Guantanamo Bay, those benefits extend to “Caribbean sun, excellent scuba diving, and Hollywood films on tap”. The larger site has been in existence since 1903 and has been constantly renovated and updated to move with the times, which naturally constitutes multiple different methods of remaining up to date with the latest high-profile titles to emerge from Tinseltown.
Not to make a sweeping generalisation, though, but the chances of Kristen Stewart’s Camp X-Ray, Benedict Cumberbatch’s The Mauritanian, or Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side being shown to a mass audience at the time of their respective releases was probably about as slim as they come.
