Delhi's single-screen cinemas need a new role, not just nostalgia

Last month, while scouting locations on the Old Delhi side, I passed by an old single-screen theatre. The letters on the sign were half peeled off, and dust had piled up on the ticket booth window. The chai shop uncle in the alley next door told me, "People used to line up here late into the night. Now not even a mouse comes by." I found that a little sad, but at the same time, it oddly made me angry. Because stories like this always end right there. Ah, the good old days. So what?

I'll be honest, I have a soft spot for single-screen theatre nostalgia too. When I watched the final screening at Regal Cinema during my undergrad years, I nearly cried. The spacious lobby, the high ceilings, the heavy curtains. There was a sense of space you could never feel in a multiplex. But no matter how much I tweeted about that emotion, turned it into reels, or wrote about it in columns, that theatre eventually closed its doors.

Nostalgia is not a business model. That might be all I want to say.

Fighting multiplexes is a losing game

If you want to watch a movie in Delhi, your options are obvious. Go to a chain like PVR or INOX, and once you add the cost of popcorn, 500 rupees is gone in no time. Single-screen theatres have much cheaper tickets. Some are under 100 rupees. Yet the reason people still don't go is simple. The AC is weak or nonexistent, the seats are uncomfortable, the sound system is outdated, and above all, the movies they show are the same ones playing at the multiplex. Why would you watch the same movie in a less comfortable place?

As long as single-screen theatres compete on the same playing field as multiplexes, the outcome is predetermined. To secure screening rights for the latest blockbusters, you have to offer distributors favourable terms, and there's no way a single-screen theatre can win that competition.

Reimagining the screening space

Here's what I'm thinking. What if single-screen theatres stopped trying to be blockbuster screening venues and instead turned into community screening spaces for indie films and regional cinema?

Last year, a friend of mine was looking for a place to hold a premiere for his short film and ended up renting a café basement. He brought his own projector and hung a white sheet on the wall as a screen. Twenty audience members sat on plastic chairs and watched the film. The atmosphere was decent enough, but the sound was atrocious. Half the dialogue was buried. That day, I thought: in a city where there's an empty single-screen theatre on practically every block, why should a café basement have to serve as a screening venue?

Single-screen theatres already have screens, projectors (even if old), and hundreds of seats. With a small investment to fix the sound and add curation, those spaces become virtually the only places in Delhi where you can watch independent or regional-language films.

Could it actually work?

A fair question. I'm a film school student, not a businessperson, so I can't give you exact numbers. But there are a few clues.

If you go to events like the MAMI Film Festival or the Dharamshala International Film Festival, the demand for good indie films clearly exists. The problem is that there are hardly any places to watch these films once the festival is over. Some get released on OTT platforms, but that's a different experience from seeing them in a theatre. Building a bridge between that demand and these empty theatres, that's the reinvention I'm talking about.

The operating model would need to be different too. Instead of running four or five shows a day, you'd have curated screening programmes on weekends. You could include Q&As with directors, or hold screenings of film school student works. You could sell chai and snacks like a café. The key is shifting the identity from "movie theatre" to "a place where people gather around film."

These days, I often think about where I can put what I've learned in class to use. Honestly, if the only place to screen a short film after I graduate is a café basement, that would feel pretty hollow. I'd rather have a future where my film gets shown even once in one of those theatres than a future where empty theatres across Delhi just keep collecting dust until they're eventually turned into shopping malls. So can we stop selling nostalgia? Has anyone actually tried running a single-screen theatre as a community screening space, and if so, how did it go?