One of the oldest movie theatres in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, the Sri Padmanabha, has recently had another facelift, years after it was renovated into a multiplex. A larger screen and better seating and viewing experiences are part of the new renovations. Established in 1936 by P Subrahmaniam (who also founded the Merryland Studio in 1950, one of the two production houses of early Malayalam cinema) the Padmanabha was the second movie house to rise in the capital city, a couple of years after the New Theatre.
"The screen, which was earlier 36 ft wide and 17 ft high, is now 44 ft wide and 19 ft high. The curvature screen has the advantage of giving a uniform viewing experience to all the viewers, regardless of where they are seated. For optimum viewing experience, we have cut down a few rows in the front. We have included a recliner class in the balcony for comfortable seating. These cost Rs 300 each, far less than what they cost in other city theatres. The other seats come at a rate of Rs 150 or Rs 140. The idea is that the commoner should be able to afford all the comforts of a film theatre," says Girish Chandran, owner of the Sri Padmanabha complex, and grandson of Subrahmaniam.
Girish took over the reins of the theatre in the 90s. A few years later, The Titanic was released and ran in Padmanabha for a record 215 days, the longest run a movie has had at the theatre. The second longest run was enjoyed by the Prithviraj film Classmates, running for 175 days in the mid-2000s.
In recent years, with several new theatre complexes rising across the state, the average run of a film has drastically reduced. "Still, a few films, like Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey ran for 50 days, which is really good in these times," Girish says.
New curvature screen at the Padmanabha
Padmanabha, in its initial days, was made of tents with beach sand on the floor for people to sit on. It was then called SP Talkies. The founder of National Film Archives of India, the late PK Nair, had reminisced about watching the Tamil film Dasavatharam directed by K Subrahmanyam in the sandy theatre eight decades ago.
In the 1960s, the Talkies became the Sri Padmanabha Theatre. It had many successful runs in the decades that passed by, the Tamil film Agathiyar (1972), 80s Malayalam films like Angadi, Ee Nadu, and Eetta among them. Renovations happened every few years. The Dolby system came, 2k projectors were set up. In the 2010s, the theatre split in two as Devapriya and Padmanabha. One has 200 seats, the other 450.