Al Markhiya Gallery is opening an art exhibition titled “When Beirut Was a Cinema” by painter Yervant Hawarian on Tuesday.

The inauguration will be in collaboration with the Daloul Art Forum, and the exhibition will run for three weeks at Fire Station: Artists in Residence.

The exhibition showcases 15 paintings that revisit a chapter of Beirut’s cultural memory, reimagining a number of cinemas and theaters that once served as prominent landmarks in the city’s public life, including Cinema Royal, Piccadilly, Rialto, Byblos, Cristal, Hollywood, the Grand Theater, and the National Theater.

The exhibition revisits a time when cinema in Beirut went beyond the theaters, beginning in the streets, with illuminated marquees and monumental hand-painted film posters, buses, taxis, cafes, and crowds gathering before screenings, making cinema part of the city’s architecture, rhythm, and public life.

Hawarian doesn’t present these scenes as simply nostalgic images of old Beirut; rather, they draw on a personal experience through which he lived this chapter and helped shape its visual character.

He arrived in Beirut in the early 1960s and began working at the age of fifteen as a cinema poster painter, producing monumental film posters for theaters across Lebanon.

By the early 1970s, he expanded into cinema operations, including Cinema Royal, where his studio was based.