Southern States
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Tamil Nadu-Chennai
TV serials villain of the piece
By Sudhish Kamath
CHENNAI, DEC. 6. Picture this. A decade ago, Chennai had 93 cinema halls. Slowly, curtains came down on 23 _ a quarter of them _ never to go up again and only to turn into shopping malls, wedding halls and car showrooms.
``By March 2000, 254 theatres were closed down in the State during the past five years,'' Mr.`Abirami' Ramanathan, additional president of the Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors Association, says.
Theatres such as Anand, Grand, Ram, Roxy, Bhuvaneswari, Eros, Plaza, Chitra, Palaniappa and Alankar no longer exist. ``Earlier, we were the only entertainment. Now, we are `also entertainment','' shrugs Mr. Ramanathan even as his cinema halls in Purasawalkam run to ``50 per cent occupancy'', two weeks after Deepavali.
``It's mainly due to TV. The serials end late in the night and now there are serials even during matinee show timings. Women prefer watching TV dramas at home,'' reasons cinema analyst, `Film News' Anandan. ``Thus, the city has only 74 theatres today''.
``It's not just satellite TV,'' Mr. Ramanathan argues. ``One, there is a general recession and it is the natural law: what goes up, comes down. And when things come down, it is the survival of the fittest. Today, we are in that stage''.
In the last 10 years the city has had only four new theatres, not counting the six screen Mayajaal cineplex on the outskirts that enjoys a healthy weekend patronage. ``It is for the ambience and the movie watching experience it provides. These halls are all 150 seaters with the most advanced projection technologies including DTS and Dolby Digital speaker systems, according to Mr. K. R. Balasubramanian, vice-president of the Media Dreams that runs the Mayajaal complex.
Two new theatres are recent additions to the Sathyam complex that hopes to become a 12-theatre multiplex dominated by small halls by next year. Abirami too will soon be bifurcated into two small theatres. ``Today, a 1000-seater may be a standard, but a 400-seater is the safest,'' Mr. Ramanathan quips.
Small theatres are easier to manage, and collections higher, Mr. S. B. P. Pattabhi, a director of the Sathyam Cinema says. The management set up its latest cinema halls, Sree and Studio 5 on an experimental basis. ``We discovered that good movies need to be nurtured and developed. They need time to reach out to the people. This cannot be done in a big theatre as the maintenance costs could destroy a movie,'' he explains.
``Distributors want people. And people want good ambience with good movies. Not mouse-traps. They don't want to wait in queues for hours. We soon hope to launch a system to eliminate queues,'' Mr. Pattabhi says, hoping to make ``movie-going an enjoyable experience again''.
Video piracy is the other villain of the piece. Various associations including the South India Film Artistes Associations led by actor Vijayakanth have repeatedly appealed the Government to end video piracy. In fact, some producers today employ security guards to protect their prints in cinema halls.
An entertainment tax holiday for those renovating the halls and flexibility to allow cinemas to fix ticket rates according to movie, can stem the rot.
``The notion that ticket prices have gone up is false. In 1956, people paid Rs. 2.50 at Wellington and Prabhat. Today, in terms of cost escalation, the same should be worth Rs.300. But that's not the case, he claims.
NO MORE `ANAND': It's the end for many cinema halls in the city due to poor audience. _ Photo: K. Gajendran
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