Whats Playing at Edward Theatre?

But nearly 117 years ago,on the evening of July 7,1896,it glowed with anticipation as the citys elite arrived here in their finest suits and flowing gowns to watch the first demonstration of moving images in the country. Maurice Sestier was sent by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere to promote Cinematographe,a three-in-one apparatus involving a camera,a projector and a processing machine. He screened seven short pieces,Arrival of the Train,The Sea Bath and Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels,for the then princely sum of Re 1 per visitor. As word spread,additional screenings were held at Forts Novelty Theatre where the New Excelsior now stands to accommodate the huge rush of viewers.

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke was 26 then. He took 15 more years to give up his printing business and make Indias first feature film,Raja Harishchandra,which released on May 3,1913 at Bombays Coronation theatre. Yet,shows of moving images were in vogue long before that,with Clifton amp; Co holding daily screenings in 1897 at their Meadows Street photography studio. The following year,the audience for the shows grew bigger with screenings held in tents at Azad Maidan by two Italians,Colorello and Cornaglia. Cinema in India thrived much before Phalke entered the scene. A play called Pundalik was filmed at Mangaldas Wadi where Naaz Theatre stands now and was shown at Coronation on May 18,1912, says Amrit Gangar,film historian and scholar. A couple of years ago,its maker Dadasaheb Tornes family sought the status of first Indian film for Pundalik.

As cinema burst into popular culture,a large number of screening hubs came up in south Bombay in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It edged out dramas till then the prevalent form of entertainment as auditoriums meant for the latter were converted into spaces where the magic of motion pictures unfolded. When Phalkes Lankadahan was screened in 1918 at the West End now Naaz,shows were held from 7 am until 3 am the next morning to cope with the rush. In 10 days,the West End box-office collection was Rs 32,000 and the money was supposedly packed in sacks and carted off, says Gangar. The rush at cinema halls gave rise to other businesses. In an advertisement that appeared in November 1921,the West End theatre announced the presence of: English,Italian and French confectioners and chocolate manufacturers within the premises of the West End Cinema,where the choicest cakes,Neapolitan ices,mineral tea,coffee,cocoa,cigars,cigarettes can be had during the show hours. According to Nazir Hoosain,owner of Liberty in New Marine Lines,snacks corners,popularly known as soda fountains,used to be a regular feature at most theatres.

Around the same period,the Grant Road East area,popularly known as the playhouse,emerged as a prominent centre for films. Spaces for live performances on Falkland Road now renamed Pethe Bapurao Road,Lamington Road and neighbouring areas were modified to screen movies. Some new ones came up too,taking the number of cinema halls to nearly 20. Till date,this area is known as Playhouse or Pillahouse,its distorted colloquial name, says Huzefa Bootwala,manager of Alfred,a charming art deco theatre which was known as Ripon Theatre till 1925. This was a place for enjoyment. The cinemas and the red-light area coexisted on Falkland Road for decades. Despite this,it drew family crowds that came from far and wide, says Azam Patel,manager of Gulshan Talkies. While Gulshan now resembles a grind house fallen on bad times,Minerva shut down in 2006 after years of legal dispute. It was razed a few years ago.

For decades,Grant Road remained a parameter of an actors appeal. Shalimars manager of 35 years,Yusuf Noor Kapadia,says,Many films have celebrated their silver and golden jubilees in this area. In those days,the success of a movie was judged by the number of months it was screened at a theatre,unlike today when its box-office fate is decided within a week. In the 70s,he says,popular actors like Dilip Kumar,Rajendra Kumar,Rajesh Khanna,Dharmendra,Mumtaz,Reena Roy and others attended premieres of their movies. Heroes came wearing white suits in their big cars on the premiere evening, he says. The star-studded premiere of Andaz 1949 at Liberty was its first commercial show. On so many occasions,the police had to be called to control the crowd of fans, he says. One of his most striking memories is of the line of Victorias,as the horse-driven carriages were called in Mumbai,lit by lamps hanging overhead. As they made their way through the crowd,the lane filled with the sound of their bells. In those days,they were preferred over taxis as they could accommodate a big family, he says.

During the early days of Indian cinema,south Bombay remained its centre. As the number of viewing spaces grew,Dadar,where Phalke once lived and made films before moving to Nasik,emerged as the hub for film production. Within the city of Bombay,film studios were mainly located in Dadar,which came to be known as the Hollywood of Bombay, recalls Gangar. Some of the major production companies operating in Dadar were Phalke Films,Kohinoor Film Company,Ranjit Film Company and Krishna Film Company while Imperial Film Company was on Grant Road. They all made silent movies.

Once sound entered cinema,movies found new centres. Imperial Film Company produced Indias first sound film Alam Ara in 1931 at its Grant Road Studios. In the 1930s,filmmakers of Bombay took the lead in investing in new sound equipment and other studio infrastructure, says Gangar. Due to the lack of space and rising real estate prices,the film industry moved to western suburbs,such as Bandra,Andheri,Juhu,Goregaon and Malad.

One of the first big film units to be set up in suburban Malad was Bombay Talkies,the first public limited film company in India,owned by actor-producer Himanshu Rai along with wife Devika Rani and financier Rajnarayan Dube. It came up on a plot of 17-and-a-half acres which was then surrounded by mango groves. Rai brought in many German technicians,including Franz Osten,who directed Achhut Kanya 1936 and Jeevan Naiya 1936,and cinematographer Josef Wirsching. Very little is left of the studio,which made nearly 120 films and launched the careers of actors like Ashok Kumar,Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand. On almost nine acres of its land,nearly 950 industrial units have come up. After multiple fires,only a small portion of the original structure is left. Since those working here used to dump garbage at the location,it has been enclosed by yellow tins, says the owner of an industrial unit there.

Today,all the bustle is missing in Dadar East. Few shopowners on Dadasaheb Phalke Road even know that Phalke once lived in Mathura Bhawan there. At Ranjit Movietone,where Manmohan Desai shot most of his movies,including the climax of Amar Akbar Anthony,shoddily-built structures house IT units,cloth godowns,and a music school. A walk through Grant Road East reveals a similar decline. Only nine theatres are running. All of them have the same story: charming and spacious structures overlaid by a film of grunge. Inside,an audience of mainly working-class people who have paid less than Rs 30 a ticket for a sweltering,non-AC experience. Most owners are waiting for an official nod for redevelopment or sale of the land and the cinemas.

For us,the only survival strategy is to run action movies, says Sanjeev Vasava,manager of Edward Theatre. This 85-foot high theatre,supposed to be built in 1860,used to hold live performances with an orchestra pit,a two-tier balcony and six stalls,all of which still exist,till it started screening movies in 1926. To keep a steady footfall through the week,now it changes its fare of action movies on Fridays and Tuesdays. It is a formula followed by several old single-screen theatres. They also bank on Bhojpuri and dubbed south Indian movies to keep the business going. After the era of Amitabh Bachchan and Jeetendra,Hindi movies that work here are those which star Sanjay Dutt,Ajay Devgn and Akshay Kumar,and which were made in the 1990s, says Prabhakar Ishwalkar,manager of Super Central Plaza,Grant Road. In most cases,the ownership or lease of properties has changed hands multiple times. Due to legal tangles and other constraints,few owners come forward to talk about their cinematic legacy or open their doors to shoots. Gadwala narrates the incident when filmmaker Kiran Rao approached the owner of Imperial Cinema,which enjoys the distinction of having two giant elephants at its entrance,for a shoot and offered a hefty amount for it,only to be politely refused.

Hoosain has adopted a different approach. He plans to run only those films which are financially feasible; his electricity bill alone touches Rs 4 lakh when he runs three daily shows a month. Till August,he has only three new releases,including Shootout at Wadala and Lootera planned. His more ambitious plan is to make Liberty a culture hub. A chunk of Nautanki Saala was shot there. Edward Theatre too has held gigs and a German movie festival in the recent past,An episode of Coke Studio,featuring Pakistani singers,Zeb and Haniya,was filmed here. Last month,Ajay Devgn shot a portion of one of his upcoming movies at this theatre, says Vasava.

Even though the days of packed houses,fans and family outings are long over,the hope of better days lingers. Its time for the evening show when we leave Edward. Some visitors approach its ticket counter,whose paint has peeled off years ago. The sound of a movies opening sequence filters through its thick dark curtains. The theatre suddenly comes to life.

The End

Premankur Biswas

Like most things in Kolkata,the demolition of a building takes it own sweet time. Its a slow,whimsical process with no clear method. The shell of Chaplin cinema hall is a jagged silhouette amidst a cloud of cement dust. Its locked gate stands flimsily over a pile of rubble. Its demolition process began about a month ago when an army of gaunt men started chipping away the innards of the century-old building,then it stopped for a few days for no apparent reason and then started again. Its such a shame that we are losing a heritage institution like Chaplin this year. There is such pomp and show about 100 years of Indian cinema,but nobody seems to care about this important chapter of its history, says GM Kapur,state convener,Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage INTACH. This chapter began in 1902 when Indian theatre magnate Jamshedji Framji Madan moved to Calcutta after accumulating his wealth in the Parsee Theatre in Bombay. Soon he started bioscope shows in a tent in the Maidan area of Kolkata. The shows were hugely popular and attracted Calcuttas crème de la crème. Egged on by the success of his bioscope shows,in 1907,he established Elphinstone Picture Palace later renamed Chaplin Cinema,which was the first permanent show house in Calcutta.

Though its widely debated,Elphinstone Picture Palace is perhaps the first permanent theatre in India. It is definitely one of the oldest cinema halls in India if not the oldest, says Kapur. It was also the first cinema hall to screen a talkie in India. In 1929,when Madan Theatres,JJ Madans family enterprise,decided to release a talkie in India Universal Studios Melody of Love,Elphinstone Picture Palace was the only cinema hall in India equipped to screen a talkie.

By the 1920s,Madan Theatres fell into bad times. Problems of production and finance and the failure to secure a tie-up with two of the biggest Hollywood studios of the times,Universal and Columbia Pictures,contributed to its downfall.

Elphinstone Picture Palace was then bought by Sohrab Modis Western India Cinemas Ltd. The Modis refurbished the hall and renamed it Minerva. After Independence,it was nationalised by the state government along with other cinema halls of the city. Its name was changed to Chaplin and then leased back to a private exhibitor. In the 1990s,the West Bengal Film Development Corporation took over,but not for long. It was closed down for good in 2008 and taken over by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. In 2008,the Left Front-run civic board announced plans to build a seven-storied building on a public-private partnership PPP model. But the project was shelved when the private partner backed out. The biggest irony is that a prized possession of the city is being razed down by its own civic body. They may see it as a loss-making liability,but surely there is a better way to deal with a heritage structure. We could have asked for grants,or marketed it as a heritage structure and converted it into a museum. This is sad for not only those who love the city,but also those who love cinema, says Kapur.

If all goes according to KMCs plans,a multi-storied office building will stand in place of Indias oldest cinema hall in a years time.