As part of our nostalgic harking back to the local cinemas halls of yesteryear in the Rand we recently paid  a visit to Asse. As a child Lilian Goossens' world seemed to be populated by highly colourful posters and row after row of people shuffling into the cinema. Her parents started running the Cinema Elisabeth towards the end of  1936. Lilian took us on a tour around the hall that still exists at the rear of what is now an optician's shop. The hall is  jam-packed with furniture and other items. There used to be 350 folding seats here. The old silver screen can still be seen at the front stretched in its iron frame. ‘The audiences were particularly keen on a good war film or a crime story.’ Local cinemas did a roaring trade during  the post-war epoch, and then ran into trouble with the rising popularity of television. The Cinema Elisabeth shut its doors for the last time in 1983. (RK, jan 2013)