Indian Express 07.06.2010
Novelty’s 70-mm dream run to go on, MCD wants single screen to stay
Ayesha Arvind Tags : Novelty Cinema case, delhi Posted: Wednesday, Apr 07, 2010 at 0051 hrs
New Delhi: It’s so old that even Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) officials are not certain about the exact date when Novelty Cinema, near Old Delhi railway station, was opened.
While the property lies abandoned after its 100-year lease with the MCD got over in 2000, its owner Seth Vijay Narain has “left the film business completely”. Narain’s father Seth Jagat Narain had set up three of the city’s earliest cinema halls: No
velty on SP Mukherjee Marg, Jagat near Jama Masjid, and Ritz at Kashmere Gate.
All three are now shut, due to either legal or financial troubles. But Novelty’s future as a theatre screening new flicks every Friday looks certain, as the MCD last week awarded the tender for redeveloping the 2,500-square metre premises to Apollo International, a subsidiary of the Apollo Tyres group.
As a gift to the old-timers, many of whom remember having watched their first movie at Novelty, the civic body has decided to retain the “old charm” of the theatre: it has ensured through the tender contract that a 300-seat single-screen theatre would be set up by the developers.
The rest of the premises can be used for other commercial activities.
An MCD official said the new hall would be modern, yet retain the old-world charm. The theatre would be on a build-own-transfer basis and Apollo, according to officials, would pay MCD Rs 9.5 lakh per month for the next 30 years.
While Novelty was an integral part of the Capital’s movie scene in the 1930s, it struggled to withstand competition from newer theatres towards the late 1980s and began screening adult English films from 1990 to attract viewers. “All of us fought for as long as we could but we could not survive the growth of newer, bigger multiplexes,” said Bal Kishen Malhotra, who began working at the Ritz as a gatekeeper in June 1970 and went on to become the assistant general manager of Jagat Cinema.
Finally sealed on March 31, 2000, Novelty was the only theatre in Old Delhi for many years before Moti Cinema came up in Chandni Chowk in 1938. It was followed by Delite, on Asaf Ali Marg, in 1954.
Makeover: Going the Delite way
Though separated by a few kilometres, Novelty could well be following a route taken by Delite, which got a makeover as recently as 2006 to take on the “multiplex competition”.
When launched in 1954, Delite boasted of being the tallest building and the first air-conditioned cinema hall in Delhi. Once frequented by senior politicians and filmstars like Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, it now has two auditoriums — Delite and the more luxurious Delite Diamond — after the Rs 8-crore makeover.
“Business began to decline considerably in the early 1990s due to video piracy,” the theatre’s managing director, Shashank Raizada, said, “but I did not lose hope. If you offer world-class facilities to audiences, they will step out of their homes.”
The theatre was constructed by Raizada’s late father, who had paid a “fortune to acquire the building” at the time.
The staff said the average occupancy post-upgrade at Delite is 65 per cent, and 55 per cent at the relatively smaller Delite Diamond. But the audiences do troop in when big films are screened, manager R K Malhotra said. “When we screened Wanted at Diamond, the theatre was about 95 per cent full,” he said. “It was around 90 per cent for Veer earlier this year.”
