THE first film ever shown in Madras was in 1897. It was screened at the Victoria Public Hall (the building sporting red bricks, next to Central Station). “Chennai’s association with cinema is really old and it has had a strong impact on the city’s growth over the past century,” says noted film historian Theodore Bhaskaran.
In the following years, films were shown in the wide open spaces beyond Egmore. “An entrepreneur named Swamikannu Vincent would show films in the evenings. When they grew in popularity, affluent Britons saw a commercial aspect to the whole thing and built the earliest permanent cinema halls,” says Bhaskaran.
He points out that the cinema halls created ‘public spaces’, a concept lacking in the Tamil culture of the time. This was the first time anybody and everybody could gather at a place for the same activity. According to Bhaskaran, social exclusion fell prey to the commercial considerations of the Britons who owned these cinema halls.
Soon, Indians entered the fray, too, setting up cinema halls, such as Gaiety, Elphinstone Picture Palace and Lyric Theatre. Even then, the cinema halls owned by Indians carried only English names, till Murugan Talkies opened, notes Bhaskaran.
“Most of the old theatres are gone.
Gaiety was recently shut down. It was the only cinema hall that carried the same name into the present as when it first opened,” says Bhaskaran.
Asked what he thought of all the swanky new multiplexes, he points out that cinema has entered living rooms on discs. “Despite this, it is impossible to have the same experience at home. It is a world the filmmaker has built for you, where you can cry, laugh, lose yourself or do whatever else you please. For this reason, I believe the single screens will persist. They will continue to give us this experience,” he says with a note of finality.