Cinema halls vanishing from city

Cinema halls vanishing from city

Newindpress.com
Tuesday November 22 2005 10:53 IST

HUBLI: Hubli city, which once boasted of 19 cinema halls is now losing it one after one since the owners of theatres converting them into either marriage halls or complexes.

For many decades, the city remained as an ‘entertainment hub’ for the people of North Karnataka only because of well equipped and big cinema halls, which attracted the movie goers and film producers.

Because of good number of talkies, city also became a safe place for many producers whose movies could make at least average business here.

But today, about four well-equipped theatres in Hubli and one in Dharwad have been closed. They have been converted into Kalyan Mantaps and complexes.

There were only a few people in twin cities and entire North Karnataka who know about ‘Sangeet’ talkies, which screened Dharmendra starrer ‘Jugnu’ more than 100 days and set a new trend by screening Telugu film Chiranjivi starrer ‘Gharana Mogudu’ for more than 25 weeks.

It was the only theatre, which also screened some Marathi films.

It was ‘Ganesh’ talkies, which first started screening of Tamil and Malayalam films whereas ‘Mallikarjun’ talkies on Koppikar road succeeded in drawing people particularly those fond of Hindi movies.

All new Hindi movies of those days used to be screened here and Sanjay Dutt starrer ‘Inaam Dus Hajara’ was one of the main attracted films.

Besides, Sudharashan talkies situated on the busy station road, was once ‘favourite’ theatre for people who were fond of Kannada movies.

Many of the Kannada films including ‘Shabarimale Swami Ayyappa’ Vishnurvardhan starrer ‘Krishna Nee Begane Baro’, Sudeep starrer ‘Hucchha’ and others were screened here for more than 100 days.

Apart from this, ‘Modern’ talkies in Dharwad, the only theatre that gave an opportunity to people of Dharwad and surrounding Taluks to watch Hollywood films by starting screening of English movies first time in the region.

This theatre was even used for shooting of some scenes in Ananthnag starrer ‘Minchina Otaa’. It set records in screening of ‘Mccain’s Gold’, ‘Titanic,’ ‘Baby’s Day Out,’ ‘Terminator,’ ‘Mummy’ and many other Hollywood hits for long time.

All these cinema halls vanished from the city as ‘Sangeeta’ and ‘Modern’ talkies were converted into marriage halls, ‘Mallikarjun’ and ‘Sudharshan’ turned into complexes and ‘Ganesh talikes’ into a hotel.

Chammankhan Pathan, owner of Modern Talkies (now converted to Kalyanmantap) and other owners said the number of people coming to talkies had come down considerably in the recent past due to dearth of good quality films like earlier days.

Apart from this, menace of video piracy, easy availability of CDs and DVDs of new films also resulted in people not coming to theatres.

All these factors left many owners of cinema halls in heavy loss.

“To survive ourselves and to feed our families, we are being forced to convert our cinema halls either into kalnyamantapas or complexes,” they said.

Movie buffs may not be surprised, if some more cinema halls are converted into complexes or marriage halls in days to come.