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Saturday, 19 July 2014 00:25 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The news that Ceylon Theatres has opened a state-of-the art 100-seat cinema at the recently-opened Arcade complex and named it the Empire Cineplex made me hunt for the origins of the once-popular cinema by the same name.
We used to frequent the place in Braybrooke Place in the good old days where quality English films were screened. In later years popular Hindi films were also screened at the Empire. A few years back, Ceylon Theatres, the owners of the theatre, decided to close it down and demolish it to build a high rise apartment complex.
Glancing through articles on the early days of cinema in Sri Lanka, it was revealed that the first-ever cinema had been at the venue where Empire Theatre had come up later. An Indian entrepreneur who had started showing Tamil films in Colombo had opened it in 1913. It was known as Public Hall.
Early records indicate that a documentary featuring the British victory in the Boer War, the funeral of Queen Victoria and the Coronation of Edward VII shown in 1901 to a group of Boer war prisoners who were kept at Diyatalawa was the first film shown in colonial Ceylon when the country was governed by the British.
It was arranged by a photographer by the name of A.W. Andrew. That was the silent film era and he had imported foreign silent films for commercial exhibition and established the first film company called ‘Warwick Bioscope’. (Bioscope was the name used for films in the early days when people used to “go to see a bioscope”!) The name of C Wagner is mentioned as the film distributor in Sri Lanka. He used to get down films from India.
At a time when there were no Sinhala films it was natural that the Indian films gained a foothold here when the people found a convenient form of entertainment. One or two Indian film companies started screening South Indian films attracting both Sinhala and Tamil people.
‘Melody of Love’ is recorded as the first talkie exhibited in Sri Lanka in 1929. It was brought by Madan Company, a big name in India which extended its business to this country and started building theatres in addition to distribution of films. This was in the early 1920’s.
“When the first talkie was screened the local moviegoers were thrilled by being able to experience the combination of visual image and sound on the screen,” researcher Ashley Ratnavibhushana writes in ‘Early Sri Lankan Cinema and its Association with the South Indian Film Industry’ co-authored with M.L.M. Manssor.
The entry of a Colombo based Jaffna Tamil entrepreneur into the film industry in 1928 broke the monopoly held by Madan Theatres and a new era dawned. By then Tamil talkies made in South India had begun to flow in and had become very popular. ‘Chinthamani’, for example, starring M.K. Thyagarajah Bagavathar was a box office hit and the actor’s name was on the lips for filmgoers for many years.
The newcomer was Chittampalam Abraham Gardiner (later Sir Chittampalam) who established Ceylon Theatres Ltd. Apart from running cinemas he was keen on production of Sinhala films.
With the intervention of World War II he had to wait and the same year (1947) that B.A.W. Jayamanne took the initiative in making the first Sinhala film, ‘Kadavunu Poronduva,’ he agreed to be the producer of ‘Asokamala’ when Shanthi Kumar approached him with the script of the popular love story of prince Saliya and the ‘chandali’ girl Asokamala dating back to the reign of King Dutugemunu in the 2nd century BC. The third Sinhala film, ‘Kapati Arakshaya’ (1948) was also produced by Ceylon Theatres. In 1957, Gardiner took the initiative in establishing Ceylon Studios “to give the common man clean and healthy entertainment in keeping with the newly-awakened national consciousness”.
Gardiner operated from the Ceylon Theatres office in the heart of Fort alongside Regal cinema in Parson’s Road. In recognition of his contribution to the local film industry the road was renamed Sir Chittampalam Gardiner Mawatha.
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The Empire Theatre in the 1940s |
