New Chitra Theatre closes down after 91 years

Mangaluru: One among the oldest theatres in the city, New Chitra Talkies will close down after entertaining movie buffs for over nine decades.

Mangaluru’s first movie theatre and the only single-screen theatre to show English movies will close after 91 years.  

The theatre was first named as ’Hindustan Cinema’ in 1926 and changed its name to New Chitra after renovation in 1973, the theatre failed to introduce new technology and also did not compete with multiplexes. To survive, the theatre also screened B-grade movies in mid-2000.

Shankar Pai who was running the theatre said that the closure of the theatre was inevitable because of the rise of multiplexes in the city.

“To upgrade to the multiplex standards we required a huge investment. To make things worse, demonetization also hit us hard. We could not recover. The death of the theatre is natural,” he said.  

“With multiplexes beginning to shell out as much as the distributors asked for in order to procure,” he added.