Eros, Regal and many other iconic single screen theatres in the city are slowly grinding towards shutting shop or being sold to multiplex chains
Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; December 12, 2018)

It has been almost two years since Eros Cinema, located at a busy intersection near Churchgate railway station in Mumbai, has halted operations. For many months, it has been in the news, with a question mark on what the future holds for this iconic cinema hall in Mumbai. Reportedly, even Regal, once considered the pinnacle of South Mumbai’s cinematic dreams, is struggling to sell tickets. A solo-screen in a theatre just does not cut it anymore, not in a business model where multiplexes can run dozens of shows across half-a-dozen screens at the same time.

A visit to the Eros building had revealed that it had been shut for repairs and maintenance, although there was nothing evident on the ground floor visible from the gate. Enquiries around the property suggested that talks were going on with a multiplex giant and a London-based realtor for either turning the cinema into a multiplex or a shopping complex, but neither seems to have moved forward in the last year or so.

Actor Randhir Kapoor remembers watching films at Eros. He believes that it is indeed difficult for the industry, especially the senior frat, to imagine Mumbai without its iconic cinemas in their original form. “I used to study around the corner where Eros is located. I have great memories of watching films like My Fair Lady (1964) and The Young Ones (1961) at Eros. It was one place that so many youngsters those days frequented for their fill of English films. The place also hosted censor previews. I’m sure it’s the lack of business that has forced its owners to let Eros change hands. I will miss the Eros of yore…” he sighs.

YOUR HERITAGE, YOU PROTECT
Eros is not the first, and sadly, may not be the last of its kind in Mumbai. The city roughly has close to a 100 single screen cinemas struggling for survival, most with dismal businesses. Tickets at most single screens are still sold at marginal rates as compared to the cushy multiplexes. They also have huge seating capacities and not every film they run is a sell-out.

In the midst of the mushrooming slick multi-screen culture, people have somewhat forgotten what a rustic cinema hall feels like. Unfortunately, some of the old single screen theatres are in absolutely dilapidated and stained conditions. For proof, one could walk out of Grant Road towards Bhuleshwar. The tainted lanes house several cinemas which are probably breathing their last. Screenings of even C-grade films have not been helping them much. Some of them even resort to soft-porn and Bhojpuri movies for making ends meet, which occasionally works. In the pre-internet, satellite TV and download days, going to a nearby cinema hall was one of the prime forms of family entertainment but not today.

Cinemas had large-sized screens with space to seat 600 to sometimes 1,100 people. In the last decade, single screens have fallen on hard times. Multiplexes not only have four to five screens where several movies are shown simultaneously, but also have restaurants, bars and shopping arcades, which lure more people. In the last five years alone, several medium and big-sized single screens have downed shutters or been through a supposed face-lift. However, the city continues to have bus stops that are named after cinema halls, some of which do not even exist anymore.

Historian Deepak Rao recalls, “Watching a movie on the first weekend was a norm for many Mumbaikars. First day, first show had such importance in our lives but that charm is lost now. Stall, balcony, dress circle, box… I mean even booking a ticket had its own beauty and fun.” He also adds, “The halls were decorated with chandeliers, mirrors, paintings and carpeted staircases. Maratha Mandir was a 1,000-seater and it has hosted some of the grandest of film premieres of the bygone era. South Mumbai was a thriving hub of cinema halls. It had so many that some of the lanes and junctions were known by the theatre located there. Regal, Metro… these exist even today but they don’t exude the same beauty.”

He goes to the extent of saying that it won’t surprise him if single screens are completely wiped out from the face of the city. “Single screens may work in smaller cities but even there, they won’t survive for long. Mumbai itself has fewer examples of single screens, which have survived the test of time. Deepak Cinema in Lower Parel for example. It’s in an area where there aren’t too many options for people to watch a movie,” says Deepak Rao, adding, “The government will not do anything for the upkeep of Eros or another place like that because for them, this is not a heritage structure that they can spend on. Your heritage, you protect.”

SAVE SINGLE SCREENS, NOW
With time, and increasing competition from plexes, single-screens are barely surviving with loyal patrons and people seeking cheap movie tickets on a weekday or a weekend. Most owners feel pricing the tickets right is the only way to get footfalls.

Nitin Datar of the Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association of India was shocked to read about the current condition of Eros and Regal. He believes, “There are single screens that have turned into multiplexes and I’m not sure if they are fully satisfied with the results. For the current state of iconic single screens, I can’t blame Mumbaikars. While they preserve their cultural heritage, the generation of patrons visiting single screens doesn’t quite exist now.”

He adds, “Around 55 cinemas have closed down due to heavy taxes and no relief or support from the Central and State Government. Film piracy has also crippled their business. Distributors often have unfair demands from single screens as compared to the terms they set while dealing with multiplexes. Service providers of content are increasing their rates which has become unaffordable not only to single screens but also to producers and distributors at large. In India, out of 15000 cinemas, 8500 are running in Maharashtra. In comparison, China, in 2007 had only 3527 cinemas, but after policy changes in 2015, there now have 31,627 cinemas. Their industry has benefitted. So, unless some drastic steps are taken by the government bodies, single screens will be wiped out with 20 to 30 percent screens shutting down in the next few years.”

Siddharth Roy Kapur, who heads the producers’ guild, had a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too. He, along with a couple of industry representatives, met the PM to discuss why Bollywood deserves an industry status. When we asked him what filmmakers could do to help single screens survive the test of time, he told us, “In the larger scheme of things, there’s an urgent need for cinema to be exempted from the GST. There are many hurdles for anyone who is trying to build infrastructure that enables cinema watching. Double taxation is also hurting the industry at large. Having said that, every business has its own model and it’s way of functioning, making it viable in its construct. What the guild can do at this point is to put forth a word about the taxation structure, requesting it to be made viable for single screens to function. China has multiplied their screen capacity by a mile. With some policy changes, we, can do it, too.”

Sharmila Ganesan (THE TIMES OF INDIA; April 8, 2018)

No, Mumbai's Irani cafes do not remind Majid Majidi of home. The Iranian filmmaker—who has lost count of the number of times he has visited Mumbai in the last two decades—has eaten at several Parsi-run restaurants in South Mumbai, only to emerge a tad dissatisfied each time. “I haven’t found a single dish that is pure Iranian,” the 58-year-old says in Farsi, joining his index finger and thumb, even as his interpreter smiles before translating his food review. Authenticity-—as the world that discovered Majidi’s talent through his Oscar-nominated 1998 film ‘Children of Heaven’ knows—is precious to this director, whose habit of casting unknown faces lend his films their raw, unglamorous realism.

Majidi—whose soon-to-release first Indian film ‘Beyond The Clouds’ tells the story of an estranged brother-sister duo from Mumbai-—betrays an aura as unassuming as that of most of his protagonists. The auteur is in the city for the re-opening of Lower Parel’s Matterden Carnival cinemas, previously called Matterden Deepak Cinema, the iconic single-screen that has recently reinvented itself as a hub for world cinema.

Here, following the screening of 1998's ‘Children of Heaven’—the first Iranian film to have been nominated for an Oscar—Majidi will be presented with the Enlighten award, previously given to Mrinal Sen, Amitabh Bachchan and Shabana Azmi. "He is the undisputed star in terms of foreign filmmakers," says Pranav Ashar, founder of Matterden, who will be hosting a chat with Majidi. Be it ‘Baduk’—Majidi's first feature film that dwelled on the hardships of an impoverished sibling duo or—‘The Song of Sparrows’ in which an ostrich-rancher tries to replace his daughter's broken hearing aid before a crucial exam, his films dig deep into human relationships. "I like to explore the essence of humanity,” says the Satyajit Ray fan who grew up in a middle-class family in Tehran. “If I start commenting on social and political issues, my films will start looking like newspapers," he says. All the same, Majidi —who is weary of the western media's tendency to exaggerate stories of the artists’ struggle in Iran—believes cinema can shatter stereotypes about Islam in an increasingly exclusivist world.

What drew Majidi, who as a teen acted in amateur theater groups and even studied art at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Tehran, to the “vast and amazing” medium of cinema was the urge to translate his many experiences during Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. Majidi writes the characters himself and later seeks them out from the crowd, "like they were people who had gone missing". He spent four months auditioning over 10,000 kids to finally find the faces that play the thin-voiced sibling duo in ‘Children of Heaven’.

Predictably, when probed for his impression of Bollywood, he looks away: “Don’t ask me such tough questions." Majidi feels that Indian films, despite good directors and talent, are still confined by commercial trappings. In fact, when he first arrived in Mumbai almost 20 years ago, he was struck by how different India looked from the picture that Indian films painted. South Mumbai’s heritage buildings and the intimate coexistence of the poor alongside the rich were stereotype-shattering visuals for the Iranian even as friends back home enquired about Indians: "Were they all dancing?"

Majidi fears the Indian film industry might hit a dead end if it continues on its escapist path. “India is no less than the US from a technical point of view," he says. "It has a lot of potential but it hasn’t been using this for some reason.”

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 30, 2015)

One of Dadasaheb Phalke's classics, Kaliya Mardan which was first released in 1919, opens at The Deepak today. It will run for a week at the theatre in the 7 pm slot.

In 1918, Phalke had made Shri Krishna Janma, the first production of the newly formed Hindustan Cinema Film Company which he had set up with Mumbai-based industrialists, Maya Shankar Bhatt, LP Phatak, Madhavji Jesing and Gokuldas Damodar. The highlight of the film was a dream in which Kansa imagines figures of Krishna attacking and decapitating him.

His severed head floats into the air, rejoins his body, then takes flight again. This happened several times, causing much merriment amongst the audience and leaving connoisseurs in later decades with a sample of Phalke's trick photography.

Boosted by the success of the film, the Father of Indian Cinema continued with Krishna's journey, releasing Kaliya Mardan the following year.

According to Hindu mythology Kaliya was a 10-hooded poisonous snake which takes up residence in the Yamuna. The Brijvasis are terrorised by the snake and in a bid to rid them of their deadliest foe, Krishna jumps on its head one day and starts dancing, the weight of the universe slowly crushing Kaliya to its death till its wives pray for his life. Krishna pardons the reptile after it promises to leave the river and slither back to its native island.

Phalke introduced his daughter in the film. In the title credits, Mandakini's face slowly dissolves to become that of a young Krishna, reflecting myriad emotions, from anger to happiness. The film is one of those rare classics which is still intact, having been preserved in the National Film Archives in Pune.

"The Enlighten Film Company which has joined hands with The Deepak to form Matterden CFC, India's first Film Centre, has the rights to certain titles, Kaliya Mardan being one of them. So far, we have mostly screened world cinema. This week we will be screening this 1919 film as part of our decision to give the audience a taste of Indian classics too. We're planning more susch screenings," says Punit Shah. owner of the theatre.

Ankur Pathak (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 29, 2014)

The Matterden cinema hall in Lower Parel (earlier known as Deepak Talkies) cancelled the screening of the Aamir Khanstarrer PK after Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) wrote to the theatre owners threatening to damage property if the film continues to be screened.

Matterden director Pranav Ashar told Mirror that the staff expressed anxiety over possible violence by VHP activists, which led the management to cancel two shows on Sunday. He said, "We had to alert the cops and now the security around the theatre has been increased. We don't want our patrons to be inconvenienced, and hence took the decision to cancel the shows."

Ashar said they are yet to take a call on further screenings of the film. "We will evaluate the situation on Monday and take a decision. We are also looking at similar disruptions in other places."

He was referring an incident in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh on Sunday where a crowd of around 500 Bajrang Dal activists stormed a single-screen theatre, destroyed property and assaulted the manager.

"They have a very specific demand -- they want the scene showing Aamir's character chasing an actor playing Shiva into the toilet to be deleted. They also want the part cut out in which Aamir says people don't pee when they see a god photo on a wall, so they won't slap him if he pastes it on his face. We cancelled all shows for Sunday," a member of the Bhilai theatre management told Mirror.

The Bhilai theatre's owners have now written to PK director Rajkumar Hirani and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra for support, and have also sought help from Chhattisgrah Chief Minister Raman Singh. Anand Rathi, who runs the Bhilai theatre, added, "We're figuring a way out. It has been a very scary situation but we are determined to run the film." 

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 3, 2014)

Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider has competition. We're not talking Hrithik Roshan and Bang Bang here but Laurence Olivier's Hamlet which will be playing at a city theatre, Deepak Talkies, for a week till October 10.

If Vishal has taken liberties with the Shakespearean play, setting it in the Kashmir of the '90s and giving The Ghost a human voice and form, then so did Olivier in his 1948 British film adaptation. He edited out nearly half the dialogue and two important characters. The Ghost was left uncredited but apparently was voiced by the director.

Punit Shah, owner of the theatre and general secretary of the Cinema Owners & Exhibitors Association of India, will be among the audience this weekend.

"The day Vishal announced that Haider would open on October 2, we decided to bring in Hamlet in the 7 pm slot. There will be plenty of takers for both films, the only drawback is that since this is a long weekend, half of Mumbai has emptied out. But it's a long week," he asserts optimistically. 

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 5, 2014)

Satyajit Ray's 1958 Bengali classic, Jalsaghar (The Music Room) will open in the city today. It will be screened at India's first international film centre, Matterden in Deepak Talkies, with a daily show till September 11. Recipient of the Presidential Award, the film won critical acclaim and commercial success in US and Europe, making Ray an international icon.

Arup De, CEO of the Ray Society, informs that buoyed by the success of his debut film, Pather Panchali, Ray made its sequel, Aparajito (The Unvanquished) which bagged the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, but didn't work at the boxoffice. But Ray who had quit his advertising job, was compelled to make one film after another to ensure that his producers got their money back.

In an article written in Bengali, translated in English by De and published in 14 Stories That Inspired Satyajit Ray, Ray writes, "Bengali cinegoers had always liked the use of song and dance in films. I was wondering if it was really impossible to make a decent movie without dropping these traditional elements and started researching for a suitable story. Soon I renewed my acquaintance with Jalsaghar by Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay."

The short story revolves around a zamindar who is trying to hold on to his family's prestige by hosting music spectacles even as his property is ravaged by floods and the abolition of the zamindari system is bringing the era to an end. "I thought that the story would give me legitimate scope for using music and dance," Ray writes.

Chabi Biswas played Biswambhar Roy and Padma Devi was the zamindar's wife, Mahamaya. Ustad Waheed Khan made a special appearance as Ustad Ujir Khan, singing a song in the voice of Ustad Vilayat Khan, who had composed the film's music. Roshan Kumari played danseuse Krishna Bai and Begum Akhtar was seen as singer Durga Bai.

The film was shot at Nimtita Rajbari, 10 kilometres from Murshidabad. Ray's son, Sandip, recalls that the palace did not have a music room and his father worked closely with art director Bansi Chandragupta to create this set. In 1993, Merchant Ivory Productions restored the film and Sony Pictures Classics released it theatrically in New York. It was released on VHS in 1995 and now it is coming to the theatres again.

Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 3, 2014)

Relative Value Shobhana (65), Punit (30) and Mansi (30)

When Mumbai got its first Hard Rock Cafe, the standard direction to the venue was, 'take the left from Deepak Talkies'.

In the last two decades, the single-screen with a history spanning 80 years was reduced to little more than a landmark. That was until February this year, when heir to the movie hall, Punit Shah and wife Mansi metamorphosed it in an attempt to diversify their audience base from the all-male-front bencher demographic. The 30-year-old's great grandfather, Tokershi Jivraj Shah was a trader who owned land in Sewri and Lower Parel back in the '20s. The plot where Deepak Talkies stands today was bought from a church in 1926, says Punit, who found an old floor plan of the area which suggests that a butcher's shop used to stand where the entrance currently sits.

Before screening films, the venue hosted live performances, circus shows and English plays. "He envisioned an entertainment space inspired by his travels to London, which he frequented as a merchant," says Punit. Deepak became a movie theatre only in the late '30s and screened silent films before the talkies era began.

Years later, Punit's father, Sahadev Deraj Shah, then barely 20, took over in 1958. His contribution was to add the balcony section. "It's where I first met him," remembers Shobhana, Punit's mother, speaking of her late husband. "I accompanied a school friend for a special preview of Gumnaam. It was a scary suspense film and the show started post midnight." Soon, she was joining her husband for special previews at Eros, Liberty and Nehru Planetarium. "He was associated with the Censor Board, so he had to watch almost every film," she adds. Although she turned manager of the theatre, after his death in 1998, Shobhana takes little credit, and has fewer complaints. And she never considered getting the monkey off her back despite some shows going empty. In fact, she admits candidly, she didn't think Punit would take over since he had an MBA and was interested in a career in real estate.

Like Punit, who with his interior designer wife has masterminded Deepak's new life, his father too strived to experiment with innovation, including introducing Dolby sound in the early 90s. "Regal and Deepak were the only ones to," she claims. The visionary, remembers Shobhana, had brought a VCR to India from one of his trips abroad. "This was before VCRs became common-stay in India. Even Jaya Bachchan would borrow our VCR and VHS cassettes of English films," she smiles.

Despite being a cinema owner's son, Punit's friends rarely cashed in with a free show. "I was at Bombay Scottish, and most of my classmates preferred watching English films which we didn't screen," he says, when his mother interrupts him: "But we organised free shows for his entire school a couple of times."

Like most single-screens in Mumbai, Deepak's downfall began in early 2000 with the advent of multiplexes. Comfier seats, flavoured popcorn and the option of picking from a range of films lured audiences away. "Last year, Mansi came up with a plan to redesign the theatre, and we were happy to back her," Punit says of his wife who first watched a film at the family theatre when 3 Idiots released.

Her plan was ambitious and littered with restraints. "I had to retain the regal look and introduce beautification without breaking anything down," explains Mansi, who chose red and black for the seats, and cut their number down by 25 % to allow for more leg space. Civil work for cracked walls, a paint job for the entire auditorium and polishing the wooden roof at the entrance were mundane compared to the challenge a critical pillar at the entrance posed. "It had given way and we wanted an identical one made. My carpenters had to chisel one out from scratch," she says, adding that the grand cylinder cost them Rs 80,000. "But what we spent most generously," Punit laughs, "were our brains."

Cosmetic changes had to be accompanied by first-rate service including online booking, valet parking, a canteen stocked with multiplex eats, air-conditioning and shows dedicated to foreign classics.

Currently hosting the Matterden Centre for Films and Creations, an initiative of the Enlighten Film Society, it will screen Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Rashomon and Roman Holiday. "Cinema goers today are willing to pay for facilities offered," Shobhana says, although for her the old-time samosa will always be a favourite.

THE PLOT BEFORE DEEPAK

Tokershi Jivraj Shah, a trader and landlord, bought the plot where Deepak Talkies stands today from a church in 1926. An old floor plan revealed that a butcher's shop stood where the entrance is located.\

Sharmila Ganesan (THE TIMES OF INDIA; July 13, 2014)

Sharmila Ganesan-Ram | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 9, 2014)

One of the 500 new, red chairs at Lower Parel’s Deepak Talkies is baring its yellow flesh. There is a clean, surgical cut down its middle, a stab Punit Shah felt in his gut when he realised the culprits were two teenagers. They had left the movie hall midway, hands quaking, not out of guilt so much as, perhaps, drug use. It was to deter this very profile of patrons that Shah spent the last nine months sterilising his grandfather’s cinema with air-conditioners, toilet cleaners, recliners, RTIs and other cleansers that together cost him almost as much as a multiplex. His labour pains, however, are yet to fully pay off.

On Valentine’s Day this year, 85-year-old Deepak— one of the oldest cinemas in Mumbai—reopened after nine months, in a new avatar. In place of shutters that would let in a row of rickshaw drivers, construction workers and others for as low as Rs 30, it now boasts two huge black gates that open only slightly and tentatively for those who can pay at least Rs 110. On the gates is a set of rules and the picture of the new, red, reclining, cushioned chair. Inside, there are uniformed security guards who ask for your name in English, toilets with self-locking doors, popcorn that comes from Argentina and high-end amplifiers that make Shah’s office floor shudder every time there’s a thud in the movie.

“I want Deepak to cater to the elite class,” says Punit, the third-generation owner of the theatre that was started by Kutchi land-owner Tokershi Jivraj Ganji in 1926. Besides sentiment, it was partly a 1981 law that says that even if the owner of a cinema theatre revamps it, he can only use it for the purpose of a cinema— that prompted Punit to refurbish the theatre. “I want to offer people a Prithvi theatre-like ambience where they can come in and play the guitar,” says the 30-year-old, who has been careful to hold on to the colonial structure and its various welcoming elements— the long, roofed walk-in, ornate lamps, elegant benches, and most importantly, two huge white stone elephants that stand facing each other, a bit like the logo of this paper.

These are reminders of Deepak’s inception as a circus venue. In the 1920s, the two rear entrances of this cinema would see lions and tigers from the Byculla zoo. Then, when the cinema projector arrived, films were screened chiefly for workers from nearby mills. As mills closed, crowds thinned. The cinema— that has seen everyone from actors Salman Khan to Govinda walk down its porch— soon became what theatre managers used to call “a shifting theatre”. This means that some films would release here only after finishing their run elsewhere, “just to show a silver jubilee run”.

“The ladies’ toilets previously had open latrines, like the gents’,” recalls Punit’s wife, Mansi, amused. “Besides, the doors wouldn’t close so there were people peeping in.” An interior decorator, she took on the onus of redesigning the insides of this family heirloom. It wasn’t easy. “When we broke the POP ceiling of the auditorium, I could see the sky,” recalls Mansi. Nine months later, the theatre now has classy toilets with mirrors, a high-defintion screen, twelve amplifiers (in place of five) and a 2K digital projector. “Basically you will find everything that you find at a multiplex, at subsidized prices,” says Punit.

Few days into reopening, however, it still had the aura of a circus venue. Punit had to deal with the wrath of its erstwhile patrons. Some protested its new richness by breaking its glass box office window while others avenged the loss of affordable entertainment by watching films here. “Local goons would bring tobacco packs and cigarettes inside,” says Punit, one eye on the office TV which plays footage from nine CCTV cameras.

These teething troubles, thankfully, are now over. Corporates have now been requesting him to lend his space for seminars. Some of them promised group bookings for certain Hindi and English films. Last Sunday, a group of 60 Maharashtrian women turned up with their families to watch the Marathi film Fandry. “Their kids even pulled the elephant’s tail,” recalls Mansi. The Shahs are now planning to introduce a ladder so kids can mount the elephants. Just like circus artists once used to.