During the second half of the twentieth century, Machghara had a movie theatre known as Roxy Cinema. The clearest published documentation comes from Machghara-born writer and poet Rania Zein Merhi, who recalled a childhood family visit in an essay about her memories of Fairuz.
Merhi describes a spacious hall with a large screen and remembers her father taking the family to watch “Safar Barlek.” Her testimony presents the cinema not only as projection equipment, but as a social venue where parents and children shared the experience of a film on the big screen.
“Safar Barlek” was released in 1967, so that year is used as an approximate timeline anchor showing that the cinema was active at the time of the film’s release or during a later re-screening. The testimony does not prove that the visit occurred during the first run or that the theatre opened that year.
The presence of a cinema in a West Bekaa town reveals an important side of Machghara’s cultural and recreational life. It gave residents access to Lebanese and Arab film and transformed moviegoing into a public occasion and a shared memory that survived the theatre itself.
Major details still require documentation: the owner and manager, the exact location, opening and closing dates, seating capacity, other films shown, and the later use of the building. The article is therefore presented as local memory supported by a published testimony and open to future additions such as ticket images, facade photographs, and oral history.