A big screen has opened in Kashmir after 32 years – Sangri Today

Bashir Ahmed Bhat, 70, will go to the cinema after 32 years. He had such a fondness for movies that since his school days, he used to go to the cinema almost daily. At the Palladium or Shiraz cinema with friends, they used to get tickets for hours in queues. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha inaugurated the INOX complex on Tuesday. After that, the movie “Lal Singh Chaddha” was shown to a select few.
The multiplex will be open to the general public on September 30 with the film ‘Vikram Vedha’. 520 people will be able to watch films on its 3 screens. According to Bhat, there were 15 movie theaters in the valley till the 1980s. 9 were in Srinagar alone. But terrorism ruined everything in the 90s. All the cinemas in the valley were closed. A few hotels have been built and a few hospitals. Some have become military camps.
This will be the first time that the generation born after 1990 will see movies on the big screen in Srinagar. The family of Vijay Dhar, a Kashmiri businessman who opened the movie theater in association with Inox, ran a movie theater on Broadway before the terrorist era. He runs a great school in Srinagar.
He says I remember how Kashmiri people were queuing for tickets. Kashmiris were crazy about movies. The show used to go home. But then cinema halls in Srinagar were closed. They started going to Jammu to watch movies. Dhar says there can be cinema halls in Jammu, so why not in Kashmir? Why do young people from Kashmir go to Jammu to watch movies?
Vijay Dhar says that even in the snowfall of Kashmir films can be seen so a heater has been installed in the hall. The interior of the hall is decorated with Kashmiri art. In particular, the decoration of the roofs was made in the Khatamband style. It is decorated with wooden molds. This is the traditional method in Kashmir.
Madhu Ghori, 47, says: “My grandfather opened the first Palladium cinema hall in Kashmir. It closed in 1990. It is expected that more multiplex cinema halls will now open in the valley. is a moving moment for us Kashmirians, even more so for those who saw Kashmir before 90.
Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has said that 3 decades of Kashmiris’ thirst for cinema will now be satisfied. Cinema will inspire them to think big and dream big. We are planning to start a 100 seat cinema hall in every district of Kashmir. However, some people in the valley also fear terrorist attacks.
In 1999, the then Farooq Abdullah government attempted to open a movie theater. 3 cinemas have been authorized to start screening films. But a terrorist attack took place during the first show at the Regal Cinema, in which 1 was killed and 12 others were injured. All theaters were closed again.
Businessman Vijay Dhar says the opening of a multiplex in Srinagar after 32 years is a tribute to Raj Kapoor. He had come to Kashmir for the filming of the film ‘Barsaat’. The lieutenant governor said the 1965 blockbuster Shammi Kapoor, starring Beast, screened at Broadway Cinema Hall. Shammi Kapoor loved Kashmir so much that he asked to conduct his last rites near Dal Lake.