CONTEMPORARY Guyanese culture is not actually based on claiming foreign creations as Guyanese. That would be silly. Rather, contemporary Guyanese culture involves the vital relationship of Guyanese to foreign literature, and films especially, which offer intellectual, emotional, and, above all, conscientious stimulation.

Culture means the cultivation of the HUMAN mind (as opposed to a racial or ethnic definition of the mind), nurturing its powers of understanding, and ability to mould human character and personality in a sensitive, fulfilling, humanitarian direction.
In order to do so, we must expose ourselves to stimulating works of art; in this respect, films which create values known and shared amongst us, and valued as both our personal and social culture.

Guyanese cinema names
The names of leading Guyanese cinemas since half-a-century ago suggested the development of today’s contemporary Guyanese culture and modernity by referring to the international identity of culture.
‘RIALTO’ signified the bridge this cinema provided to film culture; ‘METROPOLE’ referred to the chief places of culture; ‘GLOBE’ emphasized the world, and specialized in films with a broad spectrum of locations; ‘PLAZA’ shared Globe’s international films, especially modern Italian and French films, and its Latin name refers to a public gathering place; ‘EMPIRE’ specialized in those spectacular films which focused on antique historical and imperial era films of the 1960s like ‘CLEOPATRA’, ‘BEN-HUR’, ‘HOW THE WEST WAS WON’, etc. ‘HOLLYWOOD” made itself the champion of styles and genres coming from Hollywood itself in California.

Literacy and film culture
In referring to such cinemas today, the objective is not to harp nostalgically on a past that has been destroyed or abandoned in today’s Guyana, but to show how the existence of these cinemas, with their advertisements and film programmes, influenced and maintained the advanced consciousness of contemporary Guyanese, and spawned a developed Guyanese culture.
Neither DVDs, their little visual covers, or their haphazard and random showing on TV can compete with the creative stimulation of past film posters, lobby cards, or photos of film scenes, and short ‘trailers’ of coming films which were shown between films features in Guyanese cinemas.
The end of this in Guyana has affected negatively the upkeep of literacy and its attached civilized temperament and behaviour, since such film culture challenged the overall comprehensive abilities of Guyanese to listen, hear, see, and read simultaneously, within the strict structure of specific buildings called cinemas, on specific dates, and at specific time schedules.
Cinemas and their films cut us off from our customary digressions to confront our minds with speculative realities attached to ‘reality’.

Relevance
Take the films of the great American film director, Frank Capra, which Guyanese saw in cinemas between the 1930s and 60s. Films like ‘YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU’ (1938); ‘MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON’ (1939); ‘IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE’ (1946); OR ‘STATE OF THE UNION’ (1948) remain relevant to a developed sense of Guyanese social, economic, and political progress, even though these are films made in America about Americans.
Who says the characters’ experiences in these films are more American than simply human in the first place? Similarly, the brilliant Black-and-White Film Noir genre, the most stylishly effective social Hollywood films of the 1940s, once quite popular in Guyanese cinemas up to the 1970s, informed and cautioned Guyanese, young and old, about the tragic and criminal bad influences possible when one is obsessed with gaining money, social power, female affection, intoxication, and material progress by any means possible.
Films such as ‘DOUBLE INDEMNITY’ (1944); ‘THE KILLERS’ (1946); ‘BODY AND SOUL’ (1947); ‘MONSIEUR VERDOUX’ (1947); ‘WHITE HEAT’ (1949); ‘THE ASPHALT JUNGLE’ (1950); ‘KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE’ (1950); ‘THE BIG HEAT’ (1953); ‘ON THE WATERFRONT’ (1954); ‘PARTY GIRL’ (1958) etc.
Guyanese brought up on such films, which packed local cinemas for decades, never descended to the level of crime one sees reported today in Guyana, because such films already exposed the root and motivations of such behaviour.

The American Western
Similarly, the Hollywood/American Western in its best decades, from the 1940s to the 60s, after which 95% of the genre became shallow, unauthentic commercial rubbish, tackled head-on the issues of rural development, greed for land, water, and mineral wealth, ethnic and racial bias and bigotry.
Westerns like ‘CANYON PASSAGE’ (1946); ‘DUEL IN THE SUN’ (1947); ‘TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE’ (1948); ‘RED RIVER’ (1948); ‘BROKEN LANCE’ (1954); ‘JOHNNY GUITAR’ (1954); ‘GIANT’ (1956); ‘GUNMAN’S WALK’ (1958); ‘MAN OF THE WEST’ (1958); ‘WESTBOUND’ (1959; ‘LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL’ (1959), etc exposed all this. But specific problems like ethnic and political rivalry and crudity, particularly during Guyana’s pre-Independence years from 1962 to 64, were exposed, confronted, and resolved by stunning classic Hollywood Westerns like ‘GUNSMOKE’ (1953) with Audie Murphy; ‘BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK’ (1955); ‘THE BIG COUNTRY’ (1958); and ‘THE UNFORGIVEN’ (1960), whose local relevance remains today.
Moreover, the social problem of ethnic groups in Guyana then, or at any time, being infiltrated and misguided by rogue elements was criticized brilliantly by classic Westerns like ‘SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON’ (1949); ‘GREAT SIOUX UPRISING’ (1953); ‘TAZA, SON OF COCHISE’ (1954); ‘THE LAST FRONTIER’ (1956), etc. Other Westerns like ‘CORONER CREEK’ (1948) and ‘DECISION AT SUNDOWN’ (1957) were firm lessons against uncontrolled emotion and passion fueling revenge.
Both Guyanese children and adults brought up on such films became examples of contemporary Guyanese culture, refusing to take part in, or perpetuate, such attitudes and actions which divided and misled citizens in the early 1960s or after.

Contemporary Afro culture
Guyana’s Afro-descendants were largely spared the horribly racist, ignorant, and embarrassing early 20th Century (mainly Southern) American literature, plays and films that sadly stereotyped Afro-Americans in the minds of many White Americans. It was thanks to the educated and enlightening Hollywood films  from the 1940s to the 60s, such as ‘INTRUDER IN THE DUST’ (1949); ‘NO WAY OUT’ (1950); ‘RED BALL EXPRESS’ (1952); ‘ALL THE FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS’ (1958); ‘NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON’ (1959); ‘ALL THE YOUNG MEN’ (1960); ‘TAKE A GIANT STEP’ (1960); ‘A RAISIN IN THE SUN’ (1961); and ‘GUESS WHO”S COMING TO DINNER’ (1967) that Guyanese blacks and other ethnicities here evolved to a commonly shared non-racial contemporary Guyanese culture. Local cinema audiences comprising of Afro-Guyanese, local Whites, and other ethnicities were affected positively by these films.

Foreign, but relevant
For the beautiful couples of Georgetown (in particular), 4:30pm cinema shows of ‘LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING’ (1955); ‘WRITTEN ON THE WIND’ (1957); ‘THE SUN ALSO RISES’ (1957); ‘THE APARTMENT’ (1960); ‘WILD RIVER’ (1960); ‘DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES’ (1963); ‘THE PLEASURE SEEKERS’ (1964); ‘TWO FOR THE ROAD’ (1968) etc left indelible Guyanese afternoons and evenings of a sophisticated contemporary cultural upbringing.
All these films cover diverse experiences relevant to Guyanese, but which Guyanese novels, stories, plays, poetry, music, or films have mostly not reflected or speculated on as yet, to date.  Contemporary Guyanese culture is therefore created by such artistic products not originating in Guyana, but relevant to it.