Chaplin Cinema, Historic movie theater in Chowringhee Place, Kolkata, India.
Chaplin Cinema was a single-screen movie theatre at 5/1 Chowringhee Place in Kolkata, the oldest of its kind in the city. It was opened in 1907 by Jamshedji Framji Madan as the Elphinstone Picture Palace and later renamed Minerva before the Calcutta Municipal Corporation renamed it Chaplin in the 1980s. The building was demolished in 2013.
Jamshedji Framji Madan opened the venue in 1907 as Elphinstone Picture Palace, making it the city's first single-screen cinema. After decades of changing ownership, it was finally torn down in 2013 by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation following years without activity.
The venue's names trace its history: Jamshedji Framji Madan opened it in 1907 as the Elphinstone Picture Palace, it later became Minerva, and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation renamed it Chaplin in the 1980s. Uttam Kumar's father ran the projector there in its early years.
The cinema no longer exists and there is nothing left to visit on site. Anyone interested in its story can look for photographs and archival records in local libraries or film archives in Kolkata.
The father of Uttam Kumar, one of the most celebrated actors in Bengali cinema, worked as a projectionist in the cinema during its early years. This personal tie to a major figure in local film history is one of the lesser-told stories connected to the venue.
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