BEIRUT: After General Security announced Wednesday the closure of a cinema showing pornographic films in Nabaa, inhabitants of the Beirut suburb had different views on the real reasons behind the closure.

The Directorate General of General Security issued a statement saying that its personnel raided cinemas showing pornographic movies in Nabaa and Tripoli and made several arrests, adding that banned films were confiscated and offenders arrested.

At the gate of the Monaco cinema in Nabaa, small pieces of paper signed by General Security’s Colonel Ibrahim Mashmoushi stated that “based on an order issued by the Mount Lebanon public prosecutor, the cinema in Nabaa is closed until further notice.”

Inside the closed, dilapidated cinema only three movie posters could be seen displayed on the walls, including “Two Moon Junction,” an American “erotic thriller” released in the 1980s, and two more recent Hollywood blockbusters.

“They are showing things that aren’t correct in this cinema,” said a young man working in a vegetable shop nearby, who declined to give his name.

He believed the cinema showed movies catering to homosexuals and said “guys go there together, in groups of five to 10.”

“They wear lipstick and female clothing, they walk like girls,” he added, saying that the patrons appeared to be well off and arrived there in “big Mercedes.”

A friend standing nearby agreed, adding that BMWs appeared to be the preferred vehicle of choice.

“They’re not from here,” the second man said.

He added that a resident from the neighborhood called the police after a fight erupted inside the cinema and that the General Security came to shut the place down. But he believed it wouldn’t stay closed for long.

“They closed it three to four times already … if they have good contacts they’ll manage to open it back soon.”

A source from General Security declined to discuss the specific details of the closure, but told The Daily Star that information that leads to such closures could come from multiple sources, such as tip-offs by residents, or the chance passing of a police patrol.

No one in the neighborhood was aware of the identity of the owner of the theater.

“We don’t know who the owner is, every week someone different comes,” said the owner of a shop just next to the cinema.

He said he didn’t know anything about the kind of movies shown in the cinema or the people attending the screenings, but was convinced the place was shut down because of a fight last week.

“I saw people fighting, they had knives, some were covered in blood,” he said.

One of his customers, a woman with a small child, said that another cinema near-by, the Plaza, was also showing pornographic movies.

“I wanted to take my son there but they told me they don’t have movies for children,” she said.

At the Plaza cinema a few hundred meters away, a very unwelcoming and suspicious owner said he only showed “popular movies” to all kinds of audiences, adding that he had never had any problem with the authorities.

In the cinema’s entrance, a few movie posters decorated the walls.

Asked about the current slate of films being shown, the owner pointed at two posters, one for a martial arts movie entitled “Legend of the Golden Pearl” and the other for an old erotic French movie titled “The Art of Loving,” described on the poster as “stripped of any hypocrisy and false prudishness and made for an adult audience emancipated from sexual taboos.”