Art movies at Mumbai's old Edward Theatre

Out of the blue on the Mumbai cultural calendar came the golden opportunity to watch Benegal and Godard classics at Edward Theatre, instead of mid-1990s Bollywood reruns.

There's a scattered group of about 30 people standing around under a splendidly colored poster of a 1994 David Dhawan classic, "Raja Babu," at Edward Theatre in Mumbai's old Kalbadevi quarter, waiting for the matinee show to begin.

Some sit expectantly on the old wooden benches inside the cinema compound. Others queue up at the ticket counters. "Kya film hai?" someone asks a man in a beige uniform. "Arey, Raja Babu aa rahey hain," he answers, with a smile so wide you'd think the circus was coming to town. 

The enquirer joins the queue, counting out exact change for a ticket. Two women, one in a grubby but striking red sari, another in a salwar kameez, are standing at the women's ticket counter, separate from the men. You won't find us using the phrase "gem of a theater" often, but in the case of Edward Theatre vs modern Mumbai, we will make an exception. This is an authentic, old school Mumbai cinema experience, one that has slipped through the cracks and miraculously survived.

Dandy Edward: Dressed in peeling pastels -- blue, white and gold

Who needs to go digital when ticket prices don't change?

Built sometime in the mid-1800s, the compact structure is one of the last independent film theaters in Mumbai, a defiant stance against the homogeneous brush stroke of multiplexes over the city's cinematic landscape. 

It screens reruns of old Hindi films for the working class in the surrounding neighborhood. But Edward Theatre underwent a sudden image makeover a month ago with Thursday screenings of foreign cinema classics like Wolfgang Becker's "Good bye, Lenin!" and Jean-Luc Godards "Breathless." The makeover is part of an ongoing certificate course called City Narratives in Literature and Cinema, organized by city-based Majlis, a center for rights discourse and inter-disciplinary art initiatives, SNDT Womens University and Max Mueller Bhavan.

Besides being a class example of an old Mumbai movie theater that symbolizes the history of cinema in this city, Edward Theatre was singled out because of its long-standing connection with Germany. A German woman Gertrude Bharucha was taking care of it for a long time, Marla Stukenberg, the director of Max Mueller Bhavan in Mumbai, tells me. She says she wanted to create a crossover audience with the City Narratives project. "We wanted to mix the audience. Along with Edwards neighborhood clientele, we wanted Mumbai's movie buffs to come and experience cinema in an environment that was different from air-conditioned multiplexes. The experiment worked out well," says Stukenberg.

The 509 wooden seats were three quarters full for the screening of Godard's "Breathless".

The theater itself is small compared to its landmark art deco neighbor Metro cinema, but it packs quite a punch. The pastel blue interiors, and white and gold trimmings, a pit for orchestras and the three tiers of seating look a lot like a scaled-down European opera house.

Add to all that a stage, changing rooms and box seating on the side -- all remnants of its earlier avatar as a popular theater venue for plays -- and one gets a sense of the oddly displaced harmony between a past living in the present -- a peculiar characteristic of certain parts of Mumbai like Kalbadevi.

How dandy. The Edward Theatre cinema reminds us of a faded wedding cake.

Sanjay Vasawa: Tarantino would love to meet this man

Inside the theater office, below a framed portrait of the original owners, the Bharuchas, sits 25-year old manager Sanjay Vasawa. He has been working here for the past six years and if you ask him nicely he will show you the projector room, give you a quick dekho of the hall and regale you with stories about old Edward.

Spoils of partition. The late Bejan Bharucha and his German wife Gertrude leased the hall from its owner who migrated to Pakistan after the Partition.

Vasawa's father was the supervisor of the cleaning staff at this very theater from 1946 till 2002. Vasawa grew up here, in the rooms that lie above the screen and spent many afternoons watching a film or the projectionist at work. He worked in a shipping company for a few years but returned, at his father's behest, to his beloved theater to take charge as doorkeeper and then manager. 

He speaks about the Bharuchas with fondness.

The late Bejan Bharucha and his German wife Gertrude leased the hall from its owner who migrated to Pakistan after the Partition. The theater was then known as the reruns theater, since most of the films it screened were on their second run and not new releases. On Sundays, old regulars turned up for shows of popular English films. Action-hero TV serials like "Flash Gordon" and "Captain Marvel" strung together to make them a couple of hours long were a sellout with young boys.

After Bejan's death in 1984, Gertrude took over the running of the hall. She made sure Edward Theatre held on to its charm -- no big changes were made to the interiors, neither were ticket prices hiked up. Prices are incredibly low -- Rs 28 for orchestra seats (the stalls), Rs 24 for dress circle and Rs 18 for the 'first class' top tier furthest from the screen.

"We don't sell first class tickets to ladies," informs Vasawa. "Because the steps in this section are very high. The ladies wear saris and dupattas and in the darkness, there are chances of a nasty fall."

Today the show goes on under the Poonawalas, relatives of the Bharuchas. And Stukenberg says that while Max Mueller has no concrete plans for any future projects at the moment, they have had a lot of positive reactions from people who had never been to the theater before and from those who believe this is an important part of the city's history that needs to be supported.

For further information on City Narratives please email Shikha at cinemacitycourse@gmail.com