After makeover, century-old cinema set to draw crowds

Sivaji’s Parasakthi was screened here for the censors

Second wind: The facade of the Batcha Theatre (formerly Minerva Theatre) on Davidson Street in Chennai.

With a brighter façade and banners for actor Ajith’s Viswasam strung up on the outside, Batcha theatre on busy Davidson Street, off Broadway, is gearing up for the first big launch since its restoration.

The theatre, earlier called Minerva before it was taken over by its current proprietor S.M. Batcha over a decade ago, is considered to be one of the oldest in the city. It was reportedly started around 1916.

“Over the last decade or so, we had been screening old Tamil films and had a film projector. Since the facilities weren’t much and the ticket prices were below ₹20, we hardly had any appreciative crowd coming in to watch films here,” Mr. Batcha said.

While there were speculation that the old theatre would be pulled down, he said they had been considering renovating the place for a while and that it had involved a lot of planning. Incidentally, Minerva theatre was not its original name. Called The National Cinema Theatre in 1916, it had advertised in

The Hindu by calling itself ‘the most up-to-date, coolest and comfortable theatre in the presidency’.

Mr. Batcha too said that he heard quite a bit about the history of the theatre after taking over the place. “The censor screening of Parasakthi apparently happened here in the 1950s and I was told that Kalaingnar Karunanidhi sat here in the open courtyard on the first floor and made some changes to the script,” he said.

Changing with the times

The open courtyard now houses a new ticket counter and a row of stalls as a part of the canteen.

After renovation in December last year, the single screen theatre, which has a capacity of 282 seats, has screened both Tamil and English films, including Bumblebee , KGF and Maari 2 .

The film projector has now been replaced with a Sony 4K digital projection system.

“We finally have families coming in now, and with the facilities in place, we’ve decided only to show new films. A single screen in this area with all these facilities will hopefully continue being a draw among the people,” Mr. Batcha added.