All the cinema halls in Sylhet city and district are now on the verge of closure as the owners are incurring huge losses for want of movie-goers.
Hardly, a crowd can be found in front of these movie theatres, though in the past viewers would gather in big numbers creating a traffic gridlock on the streets in front of these halls. Projection of substandard vulgar films, even in the rural areas of the country, is also blamed for the present sorry state of the industry. Following a slump in the film business, the owners of the cinema halls are turning their cinema halls into shopping malls and renting out shops to the local traders. ‘Poor sitting arrangement and bug bites are very common problem in some halls in Sylhet. Toilet facility is also very poor in these halls. Security concern of the surrounding areas is also another major problem,’ Abul Kashem, once a regular viewer of bangladeshi movies told that. ‘Middle class people, especially women cannot go to most of these halls. As a result, even the best movies cannot make profit because of the poor state of the movie halls,’ observed president of Concerned Citizen Committee (CCC), Sylhet unit Faruk Mahmud Chowdhury.
Apart from the scripts, the technology and expertise of making modern film are still in a primitive form in Bangladesh, compared to those of Hollywood or Bollywood, Ferdousi added. ‘So, why would the viewers spend their money and time?’ he questioned.
Some of the city’s old cinema halls like Lalkuti, Kakoly, Obokash and Rongmohal’ have already been shut down after incurring losses for many years. Halls like BGB Auditoriam, Nondita, Dilshad, Monika are presently being run without making sufficient profit.
‘People from lower-income group go to tea stalls where films are shown through DVD, CD player and cable television. As a result, movie theatres are incurring huge losses,’ informed one of the owners.
Owner of ‘Nondita’ cinema hall at Taltola, said the movie house started operation in October of 1981. But now they are unable even to recover the expenditure of screening a movie every week. The authorities recently have decided to reconstruct the movie house into a multi-storied commercial building after failing to attract adequate audience.
Chairperson of Nagorik Forum Sylhet, Masud Khan said film directors and producers are failing to produce good movies. ‘In the past, we used to enjoy good movies at the cinema halls along with family members. But now-a-days, it is quite impossible, due to vulgarity and indecency in movies. Only good films will be able to draw people back to the movie houses again’, he added.
Kamrul Islam, an artist of Sylhet Radio said people are not interested to watch Bangladeshi films in cinema halls anymore, as they can easily entertain themselves by watching various programme on cable television while in their homes. He added that the directors and producers of Bangladesh are not able to make quality films because of financial constraint and technological shortcomings. In this regard, Kamrul urged the government to take pragmatic steps to save the film industry from extinction.
