Bhanuvilas Talkies reopens - for shooting

PUNE: After remaining closed for over 15 years, Bhanuvilas Talkies, off Laxmi Road, once a popular theatre for cinema lovers, reopened its door for the shooting of a short film, 'Chalachitra,' a diploma project by the students of the Film and Television Institute of India.
Chalachitra has been adapted and directed by Prateek Vatsa, a final year direction student. The film's shooting ended on Thursday.
The Bhanuvilas Talkies, once managed by V V Bapat, a film exhibitor, is now under the income-tax department.
"The theatre came up in the 1950s and screened Hindi, Marathi and English films. It ran for over 35 years under the management of Bapat, but later shut down due to financial reasons. The late Marathi actor, Raja Gosavi, worked as a ticket-seller at Bhanuvilas for a few years and his film 'Lakhachi Goshta' opened here, which he promoted by selling the tickets both at the counter and in black," recalled Chandrashekhar Joshi, film research officer at FTII.
Other well-known films such as Dada Kondake's Marathi film, 'Songadhya' and the Hindi film, 'Jai Santoshi Maa,' ran for over 30 weeks at Bhanuvilas. The 400-odd seater theatre is in a badly dilapidated condition today, with several rows of seats missing, the screen torn at edges and its 50-seater balcony is a shambles.
"We had to wait for a while till we got the permission, but it wasn't a struggle. Since we belong to a government institute, we received co-operation from the income-tax department," Vatsa said.
The now-defunct theatre premises were spruced up to show an operational theatre that its owner has to part with citing monetary reasons. "This is the very crux of the film. 'Chalachitra,' based on writer Sharad Joshi's short story, 'Kasabe Ka Cinema Manager', is about a theatre owner, Bhaiyyaji, who is struggling to keep his theatre together, but chooses to sell it off to the government, after arranging for a proper compensation," Vatsa said.
Bhaiyyaji and his close-knit team of film projectionist, cleaner and helper are like family. "But the projectionist is disappointed at the thought of his employer selling off the theatre, where he has worked for several years," added Vatsa. The film draws attention to the larger picture, "that of a socio-economic change wherein private ownership is passed on to the government for development."
'Chalachitra' features actors Rajendra Gupta (portraying Bhaiyyaji) and Vijay Shukla (as the projectionist), Mohammad Zeeshan Ayub, a National School of Drama alumni, and Shashi Bhushan, an acting batch alumnus of the FTII. The film's shooting began almost two weeks ago at the FTII premises.