In pictures: Abandoned West Bank cinema hides film treasures

The cinema, one of the first in the West Bank, was originally opened by Abdel-Rahim Hanoun's father in 1965. Two years later Israel took control of the area during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. (Reuters)

One of the hall’s workers surveys some of the cinema's cannisters. Haroun says the hall shut in 1987 after the start of the First Intifada and reopened temporarily in 1994 after the signing of the first Oslo Peace Accord, when it became the al-Andalus Cinema and Wedding Hall. (Reuters)

Shelf upon shelf of rusting and corroded film canisters pack the upper floors of the wedding hall: many have not been unsealed for decades. (Reuters)

Posters on the floor are printed with the Hebrew names of Indian and Chinese movies. Hanoun used to buy foreign films from Israel and Arabic movies from Jordan. (Reuters)

Here a hall worker pulls out a poster for The Burning Train, a 1980 Bollywood drama about a sabotaged train, directed by Ravi Chopra. (Reuters)

This lobby card accompanied the cinema's screening of the 1968 feature How To Rob A Millionaire (Kayfa Tesrak Millionaire), a romantic caper by comedy director Nagdy Hafez. (Reuters)

The hall also houses an abandoned projector, which wedding guests ask to see. "There are many people who never watched a movie inside a cinema and some who yearn for the old days," Haroun says. (Reuters)

The shells of dust-encrusted videotapes, which also played at the cinema during its heyday, crack and crumple under foot on the floor of the store room. (Reuters)

A ticket stub from the cinema’s golden era: there are currently four cinemas in the West Bank, serving a population of just under five million. "I hope I can operate the cinema again," says Haroun, "but I can't afford it financially now." (Reuters)