Preserving Single-screen Theater Memories

Single-screen theaters are being pulled down across the country. Hemant Chaturvedi's mission is to photograph as many as possible before they disappear. His current tally is close to 1,000 cinemas, spread over 800 towns

- Murali Menon

Hemant Chaturvedi, it would seem, revels in shining a light on people frequently left in the shadows or arriving at places that have been left behind. After turning his back on the Hindi film industry and television where he was a highly regarded cinematographer eight years ago, he photographed British-era cemeteries across India, made a documentary on veteran cinematographers (Chhayaankan, 2021), captured 55 retired faculty members for a portrait series on the 150th anniversary of his alma mater, Mumbai's St. Xavier's College, and then, there's this ongoing, pan-Indian single-screen theatre project that is the subject of our discussion over a video call. "Yes, it would seem that I'm the guy, you know, racing the demolition team or the Grim Reaper, so to speak, to a particular place.

But it's not deliberate, it just happened, this gravitating towards people or places that are on the brink of erasure," says Chaturvedi who has filmed, among others, Company (2002), Maqbool (2003). and Brothers (2015) as also, shows like Rendezvous with Simi Garewal and Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Chaturvedi's latest project teed off in 2019, with Lakshmi Talkies, in Allahabad, a theatre built in the 1940s that was on the verge of being demolished. Since then, he has driven over 35,000 kilometres in his Force Gurkha 4X4 around the country, unearthing cinemas with streamlined Art Deco facades and forlorn, crumbling interiors, picking up echoes of the participatory process that was once part of the movie-theatre experience; and meeting a phalanx of characters with grand tales to tell of an age in which owning a cinema was a matter of prestige.