On the edge of Shershah, surrounded by auto parts’ shops and Al-Mujahideen posters is an unassuming establishment that locals frequent on Friday afternoons. Regulars at Delite Cinema can be seen lurking around its ticket office as early as noon to ensure they get good centre-row seats, close to a pedestal fan or one whirring overhead to keep them cool.

But the cinema’s manager Sher Afzal is despondent about his business living up to its name.

“There’s nothing delightful going on here,” he recalls. “There was a time the entire neighbourhood would line up outside the cinema in the evening. You could see the line all the way down to Shaheen Hotel.”

The single-screen cinema was set up in the 1970s and exclusively shows old Punjabi movies — a real hit with the local Pakhtun audiences.

“We didn’t have a roof then, just got it two years ago and it was a big mistake,” says Afzal. “People would try to get a sneak peak from [their homes, looking through] their windows. You could see women and children hanging out of their balconies trying to get a glimpse of Saima dancing around Shaan as he stood under a tree or fought several men at the same time.”  

Despite the low turnout, he claims they keep the cinema running to help old employees. Ticket prices range from 60 rupees to 70 rupees, depending on the day and show, and all employees get a percentage of the ticket sales.

Once thriving spaces for escapism, Karachi’s single-screen cinemas are a dying breed

As he sits in the lobby collecting ticket stubs, Afzal talks about the popular shows: “Syed Noor’s 1998 film Choorrian is a real crowd-pleaser here and we still play it every other week. Most of the films we show were made and released before 2010.”

“Times have changed,” says the projectionist, Ali, as he prepares for the 3pm show.

“People prefer to sit at home and watch movies ... what they can’t watch on TV, they watch on their mobile phones.”

Afzal describes Delite Cinema’s heyday saying, “Fights would break out over tickets on Eid and 14th August. It was glorious. Now we’re lucky if more than 10 people show up for the matinee to fill up our 600-plus hall. It’s a cinema for poor people,” he adds.

A regular customer says that sometimes he just comes to the cinema out of habit. “You know, when you just need to relax and don’t want to stay at home. This has become my refuge,” he says.

The situation isn’t much different less than six kilometres away at Reno Cinema. 

It is difficult to spot the cinema located near Anklesaria Hospital in the busy Saddar area — the one-way traffic and roadblocks make it even harder to access. However, a small poster for the film currently being screened gives away its location.

The ticket and manager’s offices are located on the ground floor while the single-screen theatre and snack bar are on the second. Posters of B-grade films such as Sarkar, Hadh, Garam Masala, Jug Mahi and Topless line the staircase leading up to the screen.

Mohammad Saleem Sheikh runs the cinema these days. He is proud of the product and service he provides to the public.

“We have three shows every day and four on Sunday. We usually show Urdu, Punjabi and some Indian movies depending on the demand.

A ‘dress-circle’ ticket is about 100 rupees while it’s 120 rupees for a ‘grand circle’ [seat],” he says.

Sheikh says Reno Cinema has been around since 1968 and can seat up to 780 people per show.

Depending on what is showing, he says, “Sometimes we have a large crowd but not a full house.” He adds that gone are the days when Mohammad Ali and Zeba starrers, such as Aag, would do well at the box office.

Down the street from Reno are two pillars of the city’s Pashto film industry, Nasheman and Afshan.

Muhammad Naeem Qureshi is a supervisor at Nasheman Cinema and has been here since 1975. He says that they have about 21 shows in a week with a special show at noon on Sunday.

“We used to show Urdu films here initially, but the market has changed in the last 10 years and we were forced to screen Pashto films. Nadeem and Shabnam’s film Pehchaan [1975] was the first film that we screened here,” Qureshi says.

Nasheman is also one of the family-friendly cinemas besides the mainstream ones such as Atrium (Saddar) and Nueplex (Phase 8, DHA) — despite the blood, gore, guns and half-naked women in posters plastered all over the building.

“This is a first-run cinema, which means we don’t repeat movies — even the ones that do well,” he adds. “These days Arbaz Khan’s films do very well. Tickets are about 150 rupees and 200 rupees today. In the ’70s we had tickets as low as three rupees.”

Talking about Pashto film plot lines, Qureshi and his friend Aftab point out that the screenplays were much better than what Bollywood sells but people’s misconception about Pakhtun culture and 9/11 get in the way. “Look at Haider Khan or Armaan, both are excellent films,” says Qureshi.

Most Pashto films, they explain, were made in Abbottabad and Mansehra while post-production was carried out in Lahore. They say that, at one time, Karachi had several cinemas showing Pashto films, including Sangam and Shabnam cinemas in Shah Faisal Colony and Mussarat Cinema in Nazimabad. “Not sure that they are operational now. No one comes here anymore, why would they go there?”

 Next door at Afshan Cinema, My Name is Khan (not to be confused with Shahrukh Khan’s 2010 hit) is playing to a packed house. A Haji Nadir Khan production, according to the cinema staff, the film was expected to entertain the audience with blood, fistfights and love songs.

In Landhi, more than half an hour’s drive from Afshan Cinema, a surly Sharafat Ali manages Sheesh Mahal and Mehtab cinemas.

“Just look around. Does it look like business is good?” he asks, standing in front of the theatre’s grand entrance. “There are six people sitting in Mehtab watching the afternoon show.”

“We started out quite well,” he says, “back in the ’70s when we started showing Pashto films here. But now, even movies are so expensive and people prefer to watch them at home. No one wants to pay 70 rupees for a ticket. Now go away, I need to cancel the evening show.”

 Ali’s behaviour, according to the janitor at the cinema is not to be taken to heart. “There were four cinemas here, two have been razed and turned into marriage halls. He just doesn’t want the same thing to happen here,” he explains.

“Things are better in Korangi and other areas,” he adds.

Half an hour west from Landhi, is a row of cinemas in Korangi no. 5: Image, Wall Street and Naseem. The most expensive ticket here is for 100 rupees.

Image, formally known as Zeenat Cinema, was built in 1969 and was run by a woman by the same name. The cinema’s supervisor claimed that she, along with her husband, ran the cinema for many years until it just wasn’t sustainable any more.

“We decided to revamp Zeenat and Ghalib (now Wall Street), which is next door, to make it more appealing to young people,” says the supervisor, adding that he hoped the name changes made them sound more millennial.

Young people, he says, like superhero movies, “which is why we’re screening a dubbed version of Thor [on DVD].”

“But even this hasn’t got us a full house,” he says while putting the poster of a Bollywood thriller Julie 2 aside. “There’s a couple in a balcony and a few people downstairs. Business isn’t good. I printed out posters of old Pakistani movies thinking that was hip. But no one seems to care.”

They had found posters of Muhammad Ali’s Barra Admi and other films at Ghalib cinema, which were in good condition. Currently showing 1920 London, another Bollywood film, the supervisor claims that he didn’t have any more resources to spend.

Stuck between Ghalib and another cinema which was bulldozed recently is Naseem, another single-screen cinema and probably the most different from the lot: it proudly screens Tollywood (Bengali cinema) movies as well.

Fakhruddin and Tariq, who run the cinema, say it was owned by a Bohri family. “However, my father had been running it since it was set up and now I’m here,” says Fakhruddin.

“There is a great market out there for Tollywood. We screened Don ki Jung starring Sunny Leone and it did well,” he says. “We also showed a Chinese movie called Monkey King 2. While we showed this, we also screened Pakistani movies like the 1975 Shikar and Waheed Murad’s Daulat aur Dunya.”

“We started out quite well,” says the manager of Sheesh mahal and Mehtab cinemas in Landhi, “back in the ’70s when we started showing Pashto films here. But now, even movies are so expensive and people prefer to watch them at home. No one wants to pay 70 rupees for a ticket. Now go away, I need to cancel the evening show.”

Saeed Shiraz of the Sindh Censor Board tells Eos that Pashto cinema was good when it started out — with films such as the 1970s hit Yousuf Khan Sher Bano, also the first Pashto film ever released, based on a Pashto folk tale. Starring Badar Munir and Yasmin Khan, the film was an instant success, showing for more than 50 weeks at cinemas in Peshawar. Munir, who used to work as a rickshaw driver and light boy in a production house, had signed on for 10 films within days of the first screening. It also led him to a successful career in Urdu and Punjabi films.

Then, according to Shiraz, an incident happened, “Something that changed the course of Pashto cinema more than 30 years ago. A theatre was burnt down because people objected to an actor holding his female co-star’s hand on screen,” he says.

After that, he explains, Pashto cinema got stuck in a rut.

“What came out after that, and especially after 9/11, was vulgar and violent,” he adds.

According to the censor board member, you don’t need an NOC to show Pashto or Punjabi films in the country as they are produced locally. “If, however, a Punjabi film made in India is being released here, it will require permission and have to go through the censor board,” he says.

“Cinema was always very important to the people of this city,” he adds. “I remember in the ’70s when Bhutto had imposed emergency or curfew, the cinemas would be full whenever people could get out. People preferred going to the cinema to watch a movie rather than shopping for groceries.”

The writer is a member of staff She tweets @tabahi_tooba

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 20th, 2018