They were the palaces in the golden age of cinema, the grand venues of Philippine pop culture.
Now the nation's stand-alone movie theaters are nearly forgotten, except for the notorious Family Theater in Pampanga immortalized in the Brillante Mendoza film, "Serbis," as a squalid sex den.
In Quiapo, Howie Severino and his docu team explore one of these dilapidated remnants of cinema's glory days, a theater that hosted glamorous premiere nights of the biggest box office hits. They find an old janitor who lives there immersed in its glorious history and sordid present.
The theater in Quiapo today is neither cinematique nor sex den, but a busy hive of diversions that have helped make the classic way of watching movies a thing of the past.
Join Howie Severino as he discovers what's left of these palaces of Philippine cinema this Monday in I-Witness on GMA-7.