Early exhibitors M. Edwards first screened a selection of silent films at the
Victoria Public Hall in
Madras in 1897 during the
British Raj. The selected films all featured non-fictional subjects; they were mostly photographed records of day-to-day events. The film scholar Stephen Hughes points out that within a few years there were regular ticketed shows in a hall in Pophams Broadway, started by one Mrs. Klug, but this lasted only for a few months. Once it was demonstrated as a commercial proposition, a Western entrepreneur, Warwick Major, built the first
cinema theatre, the Electric Theatre, which still stands. It was a favourite haunt of the British community in Madras. The theatre was shut down after a few years. This building is now part of a post office complex on
Anna Salai (
Mount Road). The
Lyric Theatre was also built in the Mount Road area. This venue boasted a variety of events, including plays in English,
Western classical music concerts, and
ballroom dances. Silent films were also screened as an additional attraction.
Swamikannu Vincent, a railway draftsman from
Tiruchirapalli, became a travelling exhibitor in 1905. He showed short movies in a tent in
Esplanade, near the present Parry's Corner, using carbide jet-burners for projection. He bought the
film projector and
silent films from the Frenchman Du Pont and set up a business as
film exhibitor. Soon, he tied up with
Pathé, a well-known pioneering film-producing company, and imported
projectors. This helped new cinema houses to sprout across the
presidency. In later years, he produced
talkies and also built a cinema in
Coimbatore. To celebrate the event of
King George V's visit in 1909, a grand
exhibition was organised in
Madras. Its major attraction was the screening of short films accompanied by sound. A British company imported a Crone
megaphone, made up of a film projector to which a
gramophone with a disc containing prerecorded sound was linked, and both were run in unison, producing picture and sound simultaneously. However, there was no synched
dialogue.
Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu, a successful
photographer, took over the equipment after the exhibition and set up a tent cinema near the
Madras High Court. Swamikannu Vincent, who had built one of the first cinema halls of
South India in
Coimbatore, introduced the concept of "Tent Cinema" in which a
tent was erected on a stretch of open land close to a
town or
village to screen the films. The first of its kind was established in
Madras, called "Edison's Grand Cinemamegaphone". This was due to the fact that electric carbons were used for motion picture projectors. Most of the films screened then were shorts made in the
United States and
Britain. In 1909, an Englishman, T. H. Huffton, founded Peninsular Film Services in Madras and produced some short films for local audiences. But soon, hour-long films, which narrated dramatic stories, then known as "
drama films", were imported. From 1912 onwards, feature films made in Bombay (now
Mumbai) were also screened in Madras. The era of
short films had ended. The arrival of drama films firmly established cinema as a popular entertainment form. More cinema houses came up in the city. Fascinated by this new entertainment form, an automobile dealer in the Thousand Lights area of Madras,
R. Nataraja Mudaliyar, decided to venture into film production. After a few days' training in
Pune with the
cinematographer Stewart Smith, the official cinematographer of
Lord Curzon's 1903 Durbar, he started a film production concern in 1916. The man who truly laid the foundations of Tamil cinema was A. Narayanan. After a few years in film distribution, he set up a production company in Madras, the General Pictures Corporation, popularly known as GPC. Beginning with
The Faithful Wife/
Dharmapathini (1929), GPC made about 24 feature films. GPC functioned as a film school and its alumni included names such as Sundara Rao Nadkarni and Jiten Banerji. The studio of GPC was housed in the Chellapalli bungalow on Thiruvottiyur High Road in Madras. This company, which produced the most Tamil silent films, had branches in
Colombo,
Rangoon and
Singapore.
The Ways of Vishnu/
Vishnu Leela, which R. Prakasa made in 1932, was the last silent film produced in Madras. The silent era of south Indian cinema has not been documented well. When the talkies appeared, film producers had to travel to
Bombay or
Calcutta to make films. Most films of this early period were celluloid versions of well-known stage plays. Company dramas were popular among the
Madras audience. The legendary Otraivadai drama theatre had been built in 1872 itself in Mint. Many drama halls had come up in the city where short silent films were screened in the afternoon and plays were enacted in the night. The scene changed in 1934 when Madras got its first sound studio. By this time, all the cinema houses in Madras had been wired for sound. Narayanan, who had been active during the silent era, founded Srinivasa Cinetone in which his wife worked as the sound recordist.
Srinivasa Kalyanam (1934), directed by Narayanan, was the first sound film (talkie) produced in Madras. The second sound studio to come up in Madras was Vel Pictures, started by M. D. Rajan on Eldams Road in the Dunmore bungalow, which belonged to the
Raja of Pithapuram. Before long, more sound studios came up. Thirty-six talkies were made in Madras in 1935.
Influences The main impacts of the early cinema were the cultural influences of the country. The
Tamil-language was the medium in which many plays and stories were written since the ages as early as the
Cholas. They were highly stylised and nature of the spectacle was one which could attract the people. Along with this,
music and
dance were one of the main entertainment sources. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history,
fairy tales and so on through song and dance. Whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day-to-day lives in complex ways. By the end of the 1930s, the State of Madras legislature passed the
Entertainment Tax Act 1939.
Studios In 1916, a studio, the first in south India, was set up in Madras at 10 Millers Road, Kilpauk. He called it the India Film Company. Rangavadivelu, an actor from Suguna Vilasa Sabha, a theatre company then, was hired to train the actors. Thirty-five days later, the first feature film made in south India,
The Extermination of Keechakan/
Keechakavatham, based on an episode from the
Mahabharata, was released produced and directed by R. Nataraja, who established the India Film Company Limited. Despite a century of increasing box office takings, Tamil cinema remains informal. Nevertheless, there are few exceptions like Modern Theatres,
Gemini Studios,
AVM and
Sri Thenandal Films that survived beyond 100 productions.
Exhibitor strike 2017 In 2017, opposing the dual taxation of
GST (28%) and entertainment tax (30%),
Tamilnadu Theatre Owners Association announced indefinite closure of all cinemas in the state from 3 July 2017. The strike has been called off and the cinemas will be playing the movies starting Friday 7 July 2017. Government has formed a committee to decide on the existence of state's 30% entertainment tax. It was reported that, per day business loss during the strike was around ₹ 20 crores. ==Distribution==