REGAL CINEMA STANDS AT A CORNER OF A TRAFFIC ROUNDABOUT at Colaba that has colloquially come to be referred to by its name. An Art Deco gem, it opened its gates to the public in 1933 with a screening of the Laurel and Hardy comedy, ‘The Devil’s Brother’. Designed by Charles Stevens, son of the illustrious Frederick William Stevens whose buildings like the Victoria Terminus Station, BMC Headquarters, the Western Railway Headquarters, the Army and Navy Building; Kala Ghoda and the Oriental Building near Flora Fountain, Regal was one of the cinemas that opened in Bombay during the cinema boom of the 1930s. The original designs with sunray cubist motifs in pale orange and jade green and interiors using teak wood paneling (IMG.3, 4, 5 & 7), marble and glass were designed by the Czechoslovakian artist, Karl Schara. Much of these motifs are now lost. An Oscar trophy, etched on a mirror on the staircase, still stands. Flanking either side of the screen are motifs of theatre masks (IMG.1) representing Tragedy and Comedy. Similar masks can also be seen on the façade (IMG.9). The cinema, which was the first air-conditioned movie hall in the country, boasted a seating capacity of 1200 patrons and also had a soda fountain on the ground floor, underground car parking and an elevator - facilities that were most unusual at that time. Today on World Art Deco Day, here's a short walk through one of Bombay’s first Art Deco cinemas and one of the city’s last remaining single screen theaters. #regalcinema #cinemasofbombay #singlescreencinemas #movietheatre #artdeco #artdecomumbai #architecture #bombayheritage
IN HOLLYWOOD, tonight is Oscars Night. Do you recall an Oscar in Bombay, engraved on a mirror on the Charles Stevens designed staircase of Regal, the 90-year old single screen Art Deco cinema at Colaba. A visit, some months back, for a screening brought back memories from a time when ‘English movies’ meant a trek to town for us Burbies. Which of the Oscar winners have you watched at Regal? I tried to remember. There was Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ (1982). Our school had taken us for a screening of the English version. Some other divisions watched it in Hindi at Basant Cinema; Chembur. Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with Wolves’ (1990) was another. It was the first time I dozed off during a movie – nothing against the film, I was just tired after an afternoon of hunting for second-hand magazines around Fort. I watched the unblinking Anthony Hopkins in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ (1991) twice and ‘Schindler’s List’ (1993) thrice because I couldn’t have enough of Ralph Fiennes as the murderous Amon Göth. ‘Titanic’ (1997), too, I watched thrice (just for the beauteous Kate) and ‘Gladiator’ (2000), I don’t remember how many times I went for that. 'Chicago' (2002), the musical and ‘Birdman’ (2014) too I watched at Regal. My parents weren’t big on watching movies but Shomu Kaka was. In those days of ‘House Full’ terror, he would make ‘advance bookings’ on his way back home from his office at Nariman Point. And so, thanks to him, I have watched ‘Mackena’s Gold’ and ‘Ben-Hur’, both movies from a time before I was born, here at Regal. In what I consider pure good fortune, I had also managed to watch ‘Dr. Zhivago’ when the TV channel AXN held a preview screening at Regal. That was 1999. I have since watched it multiple times on the small screen but that thrill of watching the steam engine chugging through the snowy landscape in Cinemascope splendor…Uff! For old times sake come by to Regal for 3 Fritz Lang classics - ‘Metropolis’ on 11th and 'M' and 'The Big Heat' on the 12th March.
MAYBE YOU HAVE NOTICED PALACE TALKIES outside on the East side of Byculla Station. But if you are not interested in the history or architecture of Bombay, it's also possible that you wouldn't have noticed, given the traffic and the crowd on the street. Anyway, the theatre has shut down and there have been no lurid hoardings to catch your eye for some years now. As I found out from the @bombaywalla website, a wonderful repository of Bombay’s history and trivia, the story began around a year after the release of Alam Ara, India’s first talkie (on 14th March 1931) in Bombay. Two Parsi gentlemen, Mr. M. B. Bilimoria, who was then just starting out as a distributor of films and Mr. B. D. Bharucha, a chemist with Kemp & Co., met at the Bhikha Behram well on the present-day Veer Nariman Road. Sensing a business opportunity, the duo then decided to start the All India Theatres Syndicate Limited and open their own movie hall. And so, in 1932, on this date, Palace Talkies, a state-of-the-art talkie, inaugurated by the then Mayor of Bombay, opened its doors for the public. Palace Talkies, I believe, soon became a popular entertainment destination especially during the festive holidays around Diwali and Easter. For many years, after alighting at Byculla station and on my way to the office, I would grab a snack of keema pao or chicken puffs and black coffee at Regal Bakery (IMG.9) on the ground floor of Palace. These photographs were shot in 2005 for a series that ran in Timeout magazine’s Mumbai edition about the city’s struggling-for-survival single screen cinemas. #singlescreencinemas #cinemahalls #cinemasofbombay #cinema #filmwatching #movie #theatre #mumbaiheritage #architecture #thechiroarchives
When is the last time you went to a movie theatre and encountered a House Full board? I can't remember...has to be decades ago. I am reminded of movie outings as a teenager and that tense “what if?” question. The possibility was very real those days - travelling all that distance from Chembur to South Bombay and have a House Full board greet you. Such a bummer that used to be. And then, trying to buy tickets from the black-marketeer and the heartbreak on discovering that one didn’t have enough in the wallet! I came across this board at the New Excelsior Cinema, where the underground parking space has been converted into a public parking lot. I saw posters of the Alia Bhatt starrer, Gangubai Kathiawadi (to release on 25 Feb), on display and a lit foyer but a waiter at New Excelsior Cafe, opposite it, told me that crowds have been rare. “Kabhi chalta hai, Sir… Kabhi nahi. Bahut time se,” he told me. P.S.: Within a short walking distance here once stood 4 single-screen cinemas. Capitol and New Empire have been dead for years. Sterling is now a multiplex and seems to be the only one doing well. New Excelsior is struggling. 19 February 2022. #TheLifeAndDeathOfOrdinaryObjects #discardedobjects #cinemasofbombay #singlescreencinemas #moviewatching #thepleasureofmovies #HouseFull #signboard
Since the cinema was built in 1947, the year of our independence, Habib Hoosein, the founder had decided to name it Liberty Cinema. The 1200-seater single screen movie theatre in Bombay’s Marine Lines is one of the city's Art Deco showpieces. This photograph is of the tiny 30-seater hall, the Liberty Mini, that was used for press previews and private screenings I had shot sometime in 2012. The Liberty Cinema, like scores of single screen cinemas around the country today is struggling to survive from the onslaught of multiplexes, high taxation and changing habits of movie-goers who prefer the comfort of home over the magic in a darkened auditorium. Today is Independence Day. Not many reasons to celebrate this year. But let's hope for sanity and reason in the future. #cinemasofbombay #artdeco #artdecomumbai #bombayheritage #singlescreencinemas #fortheloveofmovies #thechiroarchives
Since its first screening in 1926 of the American silent comedy, ‘The General’, Deepak Talkies, at Lower Parel, had been a popular entertainment destination in the neighborhood for its residents – labourers, mill owners and mill workers. Then, with the years, as tastes and technologies changed, like most single-screen cinemas, it turned into the proverbial white elephant. When I photographed the cinema in 2010, it was trying to steer away from its then staple fare of B-grade Bhojpuri films to World Cinema offerings each Sunday, with refurbished interiors, a fresh coat of paint, a new name (Matterden Carnival Cinema), new branding and strategy to stay afloat. The two stone elephants, previously pink, had been painted white and was now easy to spot whenever my taxi went past the cinema. Matterden worked splendidly for a while. I remember, for instance, watching ‘Sunset Boulevard’, ‘Seven Samurai’ and a few Kubrick classics there at that time. On other occasions the venue, I had heard, was let out for sundry cultural events like film festivals and workshops and even birthday parties. Not sure how Deepak Talkies is holding up these days, though. The buzz around the screenings of international classics is not what it was some years back. Or, maybe, I haven't stayed updated. #BombayCinemas #DeepakTalkies #elephants #cinemasofbombay #vintagebombay #bombayheritage #architecture #myownbombaylandmarks
I don't know why but I was suddenly reminded of the movie tagline "First she mates, then she terminates". I had a feeling it was the 1995 film 'Species' starring the dishy Natasha Henstridge. Like a song stuck in your ear that refuses to go the tagline had refused to leave me for the last few days. I had to check and Google informed me that the tagline was of an Indonesian film from the late 1980s named 'Lady Terminator'. The internet also tells me me that the film "is that rare rip-off of a U.S. movie that forges off in a new direction, and approaches its own levels of sublimeness". Now, don't judge me. I haven't watched 'Lady Terminator'. Google, as you all know, has a strange tendency to spy and perhaps also read our minds. So, I am now being prompted about other apocalyptic - horror - sci-fi movies! I came across one called 'Anaconda' and remembered this photograph I had shot one afternoon when my friend Andrew Humphreys and I found ourselves outside Maratha Mandir. My notes tell me that the film playing that week in September 2004 was the Hindi dubbed version of 'Anaconda 2: The Hunt For The Red Orchid' as you might guess from this promotional display. Of course, 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' was then still playing at Maratha Mandir after 9 years. It still continues to run there, a solitary show now, after 25 years. 'Anaconda 2', dubbed in languages as varied as Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, has repeat runs on Indian cable networks for its dedicated fans. As we continue to be locked down in our homes in our battle against the Coronavirus I am digging into my archives and shall share some of the finds - previously unpublished or some forgotten photographs - with you. You also might find me sharing more photographs of our cats, my ever captive and sometime unwilling subjects, than I usually do. #anaconda #movies #fortheloveofthemovies #cinemasofbombay #filmpublicity #advertising #fibreglass #snake #reptile
Even though, like many of you, I too have memories associated with them, I have never really been drawn to the idea of photographing the disappearing single screen cinemas. Perhaps, because there are photographers who are already doing that like my friend, Hemant Chaturvedi @sankidude , who has been driving miles and miles through India to create an exhaustive documention of these quaint and under-threat theatres. There also are other smaller works by various photographers in Bombay and elsewhere in the country on the subject. I have believed that if I am not really invested in an idea I may not have the required reserves of tenacity so necessary for a documentor to keep chipping away to bring an idea to fruition. That’s not to say that my attention, on occasions, haven’t been drawn to these cinemas. Here is one of my favourite cinema facades – the Shalimar Cinema on Maulana Shaukat Ali Road near Grant Road in Bombay. The theatre is now gone and in its place stands the wannabe named Shalimar Palace. #cinema #cinemahalls #movie #architecture #singlescreencinemas #design #cinemasofbombay #filmnegative #filmstrip #thechiroarchives