annexure 01 - rehabilitation of cinema theatres in post-industrial mumbai

by PANKAJ JOSHI #

With the decline of the textile mills and their eventual closure, the manufacturing industry shifted out of the city, followed by a huge expansion of the service industry. This shift is predominantly visible in forms of consumption as well as forms of the corresponding built fabric. This changed the way Mumbai functions now as opposed to the pre-1990’s phase. This change is not a static long-term phenomenon but a transitionary city phase where a predominantly industrial/ manufacturing city evolves into a post-industrial service hub and continues to morph from the predominant finance function to a hybrid mix of financial services, informal/ formal services and cultural industry economy of media and film, advertising, printing and its myriad different forms. 

This shift is also seen very evidently in the public culture and imagination of the city with its direct impact on the consumptive spaces such as the local eateries, cinema theatres and drama houses, shopping centres, music and dance based public events, advertising and media platforms, heritage and environment; shifting from the iconicity of the single to the genericity of the multiple. This list is unending and while it may seem apocalyptic, urban theorists argue that these city phases are the real testing grounds for public culture to demonstrate its grit and perseverance. However, the lopsided and often deceitful dominance of the enabling environment against public culture spaces has its worst effect in the erasure of single cinema theatres in Mumbai.

The city economy, especially the informal economy, behaves akin to molten lead in a sand cast which readily and rapidly moulds itself to the grain of the cast. Whereas the physical city with its real estate languor resists, denies, distorts and slowly forges to come to terms with this post service industry economy and wakes up to a cultural industry economy. As the city grapples with the pressure of this morph, the resultant collateral damage seems to be the cultural spaces which are not being able to survive the onslaught of the existing service economy and its artificial ethos. The dilemma in this transitory phase of the city is that if we are not able to retain the cultural spaces, then the city would find it extremely difficult to reorganize its critical capacities, create new capacities and provide the necessary incubatory support for the newly emerging phase of cultural industry economy of Mumbai. Loss of the cinema theatre sites/ buildings also equates to the loss of imageability in the city. Cinema theatres have been and are, major landmarks in Mumbai. Most of their locations are major nodes in cities - for eg. Metro Cinema junction, Bahar bus stop, Bharatmata signal etc. Taking a cue from Kevin Lynch’s seminal work Image of the City (1960), it can be affirmed that users understand their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways formatting mental maps using five elements - paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. Therefore, the loss of these landmarks would definitely affect the imageability of the city and wayfinding in it. These losses would definitely deprive Mumbai of its visual city-form and community character. 

Are Single Screen Cinema Theatres Culturally Significant? #

Cinema theatres as a space for inclusive public culture is very well documented in various ways. However does it stand scrutiny to the criteria for listing these sites/ buildings as culturally significant or heritage buildings/ sites? We can examine the sites of single screen cinema theatres against this criterion for listing as prescribed by DCR no.67 (Development control regulations for Greater Mumbai 1991)

3a - value for architectural, historical or cultural reasons: A

Architectural A (arc)

• Metro, Regal, Eros, Plaza, Liberty, New Empire are architecturally significant as the earliest Art Deco theatres in the country. The Art Deco style, born in France filtered into India in the 1930s. It boasts of the second largest number of Art Deco buildings in the world, most of which are concentrated in the City of Mumbai.

Historical A (his)

• Edward Talkies in Kalbadevi dates back to the 1880s when it opened as a drama house. It converted to a cinema theatre in the 1930s and is still running as a single screen outfit with ticket rates between Rs.18 and Rs.28.
• Liberty Cinema, inaugurated in 1949 and named after the newly acquired independence of the nation, was the first high-end theatre to exclusively screen Hindi Films. 
• The district looking seven storeyed attached to Naaz Theatre has functioned as the film bazaar for the film distributors for Indian territory and abroad.

Cultural A (cul)

• Bharatmata Cinema, located in the erstwhile textile mill district of Parel, screens Marathi cinema exclusively. It is hailed as one of the few spaces in the city where Marathi culture gets prominence over gentrified Bollywood culture.
• Maratha Mandir opened in 1958 and held the premiere of Mughal-e-Azam (1960), where the film prints were carried by elephants and Dilip Kumar arrived on horseback decked in battle costume. This theatre witnessed silver and golden jubilee weeks for legendary films like - Mera Naam Joker (1970), Pakeezah (1972) and Coolie (1983). It has been showing Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenga (1995) continuously since its release to an eager audience.
• The path-breaking Marathi film Sant Tukaram first opened at Hindmata Talkies in 1937 and Dada Kondke’s first Sogandya premiered at Kohinoor Cinema in 1971.

3b - the date and/ or period or design and/ or unique use of the building: B 

Period B (per)

• The now-closed Capitol Cinema building was constructed in 1887 as Gaiety Theatre and it boasts of a distinct Victorian architecture. It is a heritage Grade II structure.
• In the 1840s the British government demarcated a large area (around the current Grant Road) as the entertainment district and named it Play House (hybridised as Pila House by the locals). The half a dozen theatre on and around the Patthe Bapurao Marg (Falkland Road) are the first theatre to come up in this area. They have metamorphosed from being tin shed structures that showed variety programmes to drama houses for Marathi Sangeet Natak and Parsi theatres to eventually cinema theatres.

Design B (des)

• Royal Opera House (the first Opera House in the country) located on Charni Road opened in 1912 and its exterior facade contains elements of Baroque and Indian architecture. Additions were made to the structure till 1915. In 2012, World Monuments Fund put Royal Opera House in its list. And subsequently in 2013 the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee approved its restoration plans.
• The 1926 structure of Deepak Talkies in Parel is unique in its use of Burma teak and natural stone and it has no concrete or cement element in it. In 2013, the owner of the theatre restored it to its original glory, with an expansive courtyard of paver blocks, ornamental wooden pillars and polished natural stone.

Use B (use)

• All cinema theatre buildings are unique and significant in their usage as they provide a homogenous viewing space for a heterogeneous mass of people across class, caste, gender and age group.

3c - Relevance to social and economic history: C

Social History C (sh)

• During the independence movement of the 1940s many cinema theatres changed their names to show their allegiance to the independence movement. For example, Laxmi and Venus theatres in Parel changed their names to Jai Hind and Bharatmata; in later years, Jawahar and Kasturba Talkies were named after Jawaharlal Nehru and Kasturba Gandhi.

Economic History C (eh)

• A typical single screen cinema theatre has many employees that are employed by the theatre management and operate within the premises of the theatre - Projectionist, Usher, Manager, Security Guard, Electrician, Ground Keeper, Ticket Seller, Sweeper, Canteen boys etc. But an active cinema theatre also generates substantial employment and livelihood practices around its periphery like snacks and beverages carts, knick-knack sellers, music and DVD shops, games like horse rides and merry-go-rounds, fashion clothes and accessories shops, photo studios, restaurants and bars etc. These small enterprises are ancillary to the cinema theatre and will disappear if the cinema theatre shuts down.

3d - Association with well-known persons or events: D

Persons/ Events D (bio)

• Cinema theatres have always been venues for important cultural events right from Dadabhai Naoroji visiting the Victoria Theatre (later Taj talkies) in 1893 for a Goan zagor performance to Films Division screening the funeral of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Regal Cinema on the same day in 1950 to Regal then hosting the third Filmfare Awards in 1955, all the way to Liberty Cinema hosting the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2013.

3e - A building or groups of buildings and/ or areas of a distinct architectural design and/ or style, historic period or way of life having sociological interest and/ or community value: E

Community Value E (cv)

• Gaiety-Galaxy-Gemini, a triplet cinema theatre opened in 1972, and in 2000 four smaller theatres were added to its complex - Gossip, Gem, Grace and Glamor. This cluster of theatres is synonymous to the mixed culture of Bandra-Khar-Vile Parle area and is and is widely visited by people from all classes and language groups. Bollywood film stars often attend shows in these theatres in disguise to judge the audience response to their films. *Kalpana-Kamran-Kings is another triplet cinema theatre in the Kalina-Kurla area that plays a similar role in the socio-cultural life of the people from the surrounding neighbourhoods.

3f - The unique value of a building or architectural features or artefact and/ or being part of a chain of architectural development that would be broken if it were lost: F

Architectural Features F (af)

• One of the biggest architectural achievement of Mumbai has been the Art Deco movement of the 1930s. What is unique about the Deco movement in Bombay is that it merged with the Indian and Islamic and a new Deco-Saracenic style was created. Cinema theatres like Regal, Eros, Metro, Liberty, Plaza, New Empire are part of this chain which includes other buildings like the New India Assurance buildings and the residential apartments that dot Marine Drive.

3h - Represents forms of technological development: H

Technological Developments H (tec)

• Cinema theatres stand testimony to the changing techology in the cinema industry at the production, distribution and exhibition stages of a film. When silent cinema changed to talkie cinema, theatres had to install new sound projecting systems. Similarly, when film prints were replaced by digital by digital prints the distribution pattern changed and film projectors became obsolete machines, with films with films now being beamed via satellite to the theatres. As a space of public entertainment, cinema theatres are always agile and adaptable to technological development. 

It is evident from this list that cinema theatres do qualify under several criteria for listing a heritage site and based on these criterion they can be listed as Grade I (as prime landmarks of Mumbai), Grade II (regionally or locally important landmarks of Mumbai) and Grade III (determines the character of the locality etc.) heritage buildings in Greater Mumbai. Listing of these sites will enhance the imageablity of these buildings and empower them with incentives that are proposed to be applicable to Heritage Sites/ buildings in Greater Mumbai. An additional advantage of listing these sites is that owners can change the user status of the balance property for financial gain, enabling them to sustain the theatre. Moreover the proposed incentives for listed heritage sites may enable the theatre owners to avail Heritage TDR for balance and bonus development rights, Heritage TDR for repair, waivers in property tax and local authority charges as well as avail soft loans for maintenance and part adaptive reuse of the cinema theatre sites.

Development Planning and Cinema Theatres #

The Development Plan for Mumbai is the single largest and the most important planning activity which affects the city over a long period across generations (although a Development Plan is effective for 20 years the preparation and finalisation does stretch the period to more than 30 years) The revision of the Development plan for 2014-34 is ongoing following an intervention by more than 100 civil society groups, institutions and organisations. The opening up of the plan process also brought to light the omnipresent fact that the amenities in the city are woefully inadequate and would not be anywhere near national standards in the plan period. 

Cinema theatres are one of the most important catalysts for the sustainability of a neighbourhood as well as for making of a city-level public realm. This public realm is not just in terms of physical amenity, but it also assists in building a city’s imagination and identity. These sarvajanik (open to all/ no differential treatment for caste, class, creed, community and gender) public spaces are an essential part of the creation of amenity space. The earlier Development Plan (1967 & 2001) had recognised this amenity had recognised this amenity potential them under the category of city level amenity. These cinema theatres were structured organically on the dominant demography of city localities. The same would have to be followed for the revision of the Development Plan for 2014-34. Mumbai had 70 cinema theatres for the population of 29,94,020 by 1951, the standard ratio of 1 cinema theatre per 1,00,000 people (the standard of 1 cinema theatre for a population of 1,00,000 is prescribed by the Urban Development Plan Formulation and Implementation/ UDPFI Guidelines 2006, Ministry of Urban Affairs, Government of India for all Development Plans in India) was adequately met, with each theatre catering to a locality of approximately 43,000 people. But in 2011 Mumbai had only 76 single screen cinema theatres for the population of 1,25,00,000. This ratio since then escalated to 1 cinema theatre per 1,64,473 people. 

This inadequacy can be corrected if the plots earmarked for/ as cinema theatres in the development plan 1981-2001 (sanctioned period 1993-2013) continue with added incentive to adaptively reuse the plots, buildings and the augmented potential on the same site and/ or in the same area/ ward. Identifying the culturally significant sites/ buildings and providing financial legislative support to them as a significant heritage site would definitely assist and improve their longevity. The revision of the Development Plan for 2014-34 should, through land use zoning, reservation of plots and mixed-use-mechanism, aim to achieve at least the standards prescribed in UDPFI 2006. An atmosphere comprising of an enabling environment, financial incentives, legislative amendments and local authority/ state authority support will ensure that the single screen cinema theatres make a smooth transition into Mumbai’s future and will retain their unique characteristic of being a public space, first and foremost.

Reproduced from Cinema Theatres in Bombay / Mumbai A Dossier | Published by Urban Design Research Institute and MAJLIS | Mumbai, Dated September 2014 | Pg. Nos. 65 to 71 for review against JOSHI vs UNNI, a mini-series on ideas about Mumbai’s development by two of its most quoted architect-activists between 2012 & ‘16