Hindmata theatre gets a digital makeover

Interiors of Mumbai’s Hindmata movie hall

Despite the decline of single screen cinemas in Mumbai, here comes a ray of hope with a modern twist. Hindmata theatre, located in Mumbai’s Dadar East, which was pulled down in 2004 to make way for a mall has started screening films, starting with Ek Villain on June 28. This new lease of life to the old cinema has been provided with a partnership between Trikaal Theatres & Realty and Gold Digital Theatres Pvt Ltd.
Rajesh Gupta, Executive Director of Trikaal Theatres & Realty, said, “We bought the property from Kumar builders, who pulled down the original structure, in 2010. It took a few years for us to get the necessary permissions to screen movies, though the structure was already in place. Now that we have everything in order, we have opened the theatre.”
According to Development Control Regulations, if a theatre is demolished, another one needs to be constructed in its place with at least 33 per cent capacity of the original. While the ground and first floor of the mall has been occupied by textile stores, the second floor still lies vacant.
In its new avatar, the theatre would be called Gold Digital Cinema, and while it would still be a 245-seater single screen hall, it would have all the amenities that one would find in a multiplex, said Hasmukh Shah, who co-owns Gold Digital Theatres Pvt Ltd. “While there is a certain magic of watching a film in an 800-seater single screen theatre, we are providing all we can for the new hall – from great sound to furnishings,” Shah added.
The theatre was built in the mid-1930s, around the time Bharatmata and Jai Hind came up, a trio of theatres that specially catered to the mill workers of the area. “Initially, they screened only Marathi movies, but were one of the first halls in the area to start screening Hindi films in the mid-50s,” said Sudhir Nandgaonkar, veteran film society activist and co-founder of Prabhat Chitra Mandal. Gupta added that the new version of the theatre would screen Hindi, Marathi and English films.
The new theatre was launched by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, Yuva Sena Chairperson Aditya Thackeray and Rajya Sabha MP Ramdas Athawale on June 27.