Now, Ellora and Mini Rathindra down shutters

On March 15,

Ellora

— a popular theatre located on Souren Roy Road — downed its shutter. The last film that the theatre had run was Thai Curry. Only five people had watched the movie in the 950-seater. Co-owner Ratan Saha said poor sales figures was one of the main reasons for taking the drastic decision to shut down a theatre built in the ’70s. Ratan is now waiting for the state government to issue a notification on the service charge problem.

On June 28, Ranadip Singha Roy downed the shutter for Mini Rathindra. This 654-seater was established in 1989. “My grandfather,

Rathindra

Singha Roy, had established Rathindra in 1984. It has a capacity of 1,434. Mini Rathindra was built in 1989 with lesser seating capacity. During renovation, we brought the number of seats down to 654. However, in recent times, we couldn’t even sustain that,” said Ranadip.

The first casualties were four staffers of the theatre. “Including casual and permanent staff, we now have eight people working for Rathindra. Four, including seat pointers and booking department officials, have been laid off. With the kind of sales we have been witnessing, it was difficult to run Mini Rathindra. The multiplex trend has hit us hard. Besides, we also have to deal with the politics and lobbying within the distribution fraternity. Effectively, we hardly got good films to run the theatre,” Ranadip added.

In June last week, Mini Rathindra ran three shows. Two of them were of the Jeet-starrer, Shesh Theke Shuru. The other was Birsa Dasgupta’s Bibaho Obhijaan. “On an average, each show sold only 30 tickets when the capacity was 654. How could we continue this way?” he asked. By year-end, Ranadip intends to shut down Rathindra as well. “I don’t know when we last got a houseful show at Rathindra! With a capacity of 1,434, we usually sell only 200 tickets per show. Even a Salman Khan film doesn’t get a full house. There are rumours of a multiplex coming up in Sodepur. After that, there is no way one can carry on,” he added.

Plans are on to build a commercial complex at this address. The blueprint is almost ready. “The architectural design is complete. We intend to have two screens on the first floor. Each can have a capacity of 120-150. The rest can be a commercial space. We have had a word with big players in the market. If the deals don’t come through, we will run the screens ourselves,” he added.

Will the plan of approaching the state government to issue of notification on service charge come to any help for him? “Not really. The sales are not there. If that isn’t there, what good will service charge do?” Ranadip said.
However, Ratan Saha, the co-owner of Ellora Cinema, is optimistic about reopening his theatre. “Four years back, we had taken over Ellora Cinema. I still want to run my theatre. I don’t want Ellora to be razed to the ground for building an apartment. I love cinema and that has to be there. I have converted Ajanta cinema into a plex and it is running fine now. If I get the service charge incentive, I will certainly reopen Ellora. I have taken over Sandhya (Balurghat), Anandam Chitramandir (Memory), Debjani Cinema (Basirhat) and Chitra cinema (Bolpur). The service charge incentive will help me develop these properties into mini plexes,” Ratan concluded.


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