20th Century Cinema, Nairobi (in the 1960's)

 

Nairobi, 1960s

The photo was taken from the just constructed Ambassadeur Hotel in Nairobi

Can you see the cinema??

see photo on the far left towards the end of the parking lot .You can see the sign 20th Century shown perpendicularly!! Next to is the lighted sign showing which film was showing. 20th Century Cinema was on Queensway Road. This was later changed to Mama Ngina Street. In those days you could park your car across the street in the large outdoor parking lot before Hilton hotel was built in 1969!

Railway Cinema, Nairobi

 

Railway Cinema, Nairobi 1910

The mabati barn cinema hall in Nairobi railways 1910s

Plaza Cinema, Mombasa

 

Plaza Cinema, Mombasa

Do you remember driving by this cinema on your way to Makupa roundabout? Plaza cinema was on the left-hand side about 1/2 a km before the roundabout.

On one of our leisurely drives sometime before 1979, we stopped by there during an evening show. It played Indian movies. That evening an Indian movie had already started. We met the owner. We introduced ourselves indicating we were from Regal. I recall the owner saying he partnered with someone to open the cinema. He worked at the Mombasa Town Council.

While we chatted, I walked into the auditorium to catch a glimpse of the movie. There were about 200-250 seats. There were about 50 movie patrons. It looked like a comfortable cinema. There was no balcony. The structure was supported by a number of square pillars about a foot in length. The seats were positioned so that for the most part you had an unobstructed view.

The Nation and Standard would include the Plaza cinema in the Mombasa movie listings. I remember when Kabhi Kabhie played in Mombasa around 1976/1977. All cinemas including the Plaza Cinema and except Regal showed this movie!

ref: below is an excerpt from the Awaaz Magazine

some feedback from the facebook post:

Joseph Ayoro

The late Yusuf Dartey is the one who work with municipal council of Mombasa as accountant, he was a co owner of Plaza cinema , he was our neighbors at Ganjoni, but still his family staying at Ganjoni currently.

George Kisundi

When I was young our late Dad took us to the Plaza Cinema and watched a local production called 'Mlevi' starring veteran late comedian Mzee Pembe.

Nyanza Picture Palace, Kisumu...

 

Nyanza Picture Palace, Kisumu...

and the connection to Regal Theatre in Mombasa, and Shan Cinema in Nairobi.

This cinema shut down a long time ago! However, the building survives and is occupied by retail stores. The google photos below shows that the sign 'Nyanza Picture Palace' still exists and you can see the red corrugated roof on the right in one of the photos below.

A writeup in Friends of Mombasa is as follows: "Oginga Odinga Road: Nyanza Cinema was along that street, and belonged to an Ismaili family called the Bhanji's, Gullu and Hassanali Bhanji two brothers who were so friendly and so warm"

I had the happy occasion to join the old folks on the long drive from Mombasa to Kisumu around 1973 or so. Unbeknownst to me it turned out that the Bhanji brothers were related!! Their maternal grandmother (Bhane) was the sister of Janmohamed Hasham who together with his brother Valli Hasham founded Regal.

While my dad attended meetings of the Aga Khan Supreme council of East Africa (as it was then known) I spent time with my newly found relatives and of course excitedly visited the Nyanza Picture Palace often. It had around 500 seats in the stalls. There was no balcony. The structure was amazingly similar to the Regal in Mombasa. They both had similar red corrugated roofs. Its box-office revenues were roughly half that of Regal in Mombasa.

Unlike most other cinemas that had the screen parallel to the main road, the screen at the Nyanza Picture Palace was perpendicular to the main road and to the right as seen in the photos below. The lobby and ticket offices were to the left. I sat in the staff seats which were at the back on the left-hand side of the auditorium.

Gulu was a large jovial person. He loved his beer. We met him a few months later at the Regal Bar in Mombasa. He said that after his vacation he would go to Nairobi to visit the managers at the KFC offices. For cinema operators meetings with the KFC managers were an important and exciting event!

I recall him proudly saying he knew Odinga senior and that he would often drop by the Nyanza Picture Palace and sit in the staff seats to watch a movie! He appears to be the only well-known politician who visited a local cinema to watch a movie!

Later on, in Nairobi. I was introduced to Gulu's brother Haider. Haider rented and operated the Shan cinema in Nairobi...but that is another story!

Gordon Onyango Omenya (in A Global History of Asian’s Presence In Kisumu) provided an interesting description and role of cinemas in Kisumu:

"On the issue of Indian culture, it is largely seen that Bollywood films were very popular in Nyanza and Kisumu in particular. It was perceived that somewhere, there was a similarity in the culture, which perhaps could have been the key element for the popularity of Bollywood.

Bollywood offered a third space, between local African culture and western culture but people created their own African image of the orient, of India, in Bollywood and dance, filling in the gaps in their own imagination (Dubey, 2010:16). In places like Tivoli and Nyanza Cinema in Kisumu, Asian culture was lived and consumed with the greatest intensity through cinema, music, food and sports. This helped in bridging ethnic and racial boundaries.

Socially, Asians owned and managed some entertainment joints in the Nyanza region compared to the Western region. For instance, Asians managed cinema theatres such as Tivoli cinema and Nyanza cinema. These cinema theatres mainly showed Indian movies, which were apparently popular with African viewers. Movies acted by Amitabh Bachan were very popular with the African youthful audience who drew some social lessons from these movies

Similarly, the level of integration was also evident by the fact that Africans and Asians watched Indian films and movies together in Asian owned theatres such as Nyanza Cinema and Tivoli Cinema"

ref:

A Global History of Asian’s Presence In Kisumu, Gordon Onyango Omenya

excerpt and bottom right photo from:

http://www.friendsofmombasa.com/cities-towns.../kisumu/atch

How going to the Cinema was part of daily life in Mombasa!!

This is related by a Kenyan Indian. Going to the cinema was an activity interwoven into the fabric of the Indian cultural life in Mombasa!!

B Meera Joshi https://www.linkedin.com/.../meera-joshi-9a9321232_i.../

I grew up in Mombasa, Kenya, East Africa. Regardless of the weather, our dinner time was at 8:00 PM and bed time was 10:30. Eating out at a restaurant was a huge deal, a rarity actually, that only happened when it was a birthday or a very special occasion to celebrate.

There was no such thing as fast food on every other day, and having a bottle of either Coca Cola, Fanta, pepsi or Mirinda or portello with jugu was a real treat reserved for SUNDAYS only if you had behaved well during the week, or potato chips and coconut chutney. Bhajias of Mombasa with Coconut Chutney and pack potatoes. Bhagwanji, Mombasa Mix was a treat once a month and the same went with Jalebi and Ghantia and other snacks from Bhagwanji's. Pass your final exams and you might have gotten a new set of clothes or Bata shoes, Kit Kat etc. Blue Room

There was no taking or picking you up in the car, you either jump on lifts in friend's car or rode on your bicycle ( if you were lucky to own one) or just walked home. We didn’t have appletv AmazonPrime or Netflix. No TV was available. Our main entertainment was Radio....during football matches...every corner had a gathering and would all listen to live commentary from BBC. On weekends, our parents took us to Naaz, Kenya, Regal, Moons cinema for a rare treat of movie..and offcourse DRIVE IN cinema which was more like picnic place on weekends...and their amazing mouth watering chips.

Raw mangoes, mbuyus and muhogo filled with pili pili manga na kachumbari were like god's gift to us..We played chor police, gili danda, Football, Cricket, pakra pakri and gololi and any other game we could come up with. We went every morning to Mombasa Old Port where Tangavizi with plenty of sugar was out of this world. At home, we stuck to draughts (dama), ludo, snakes and ladders and Monopoly. Popular Book shop, Pran pen corner Hussieni Bookshop for Stationery and books and get our comics Dandy, Beano, Topper, Beezer and other magazines.

Staying shut in the house was a PUNISHMENT and the only thing we knew about "bored" was --- "You better find something to do before I find it for you!" And times with a stick too

Life was good without insta, facebook, twitter.
We ate what Mum made for dinner and put in our lunch and snack box. Bottled water was non- existent. We drank from the school water tap.

We weren't AFRAID OF ANYTHING. We played until dark... sunset was our alarm.

If someone had a fight, that's what it was and we were friends again a day later if not SOONER.

We did not know what luxury was. Our simple lives were so good.Those were the good days. So many kids today will never know how it feels to be a real kid .

I loved my childhood and all the friends I hung around with.

Our generation has been through all the major inventions and achievements of tye 20th and 21st century.

We are the rarest of them all

            

Map of Old Cinemas in Dar-es-Salaam

 The list of 7 cinemas are:

    Empire Cinema

    Empress Cinema

    Avalon Cinema

   New Chox Cinema

   Azania/Cameo Cinema

   Starlight Cinema

   Odeon Cinema

Empire Cinema, Dar-es-Salaam

 Empire Cinema advertisement in local newspaper.

Adiós gringo is a 1965 colour Spaghetti Western film directed by Giorgio Stegani. It stars Giuliano Gemma and was co produced between Italy, Spain and France. A major success in Italy, it was the 4th highest grossing Italian picture of the year.

see more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi%C3%B3s_gringo 

The advert indicates the actor Montgomery Wood! Who is Montgomery Wood

 Per wikipedia Giuliano Gemma was sometimes credited as Montgomery Wood!!

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_Gemma

Nairobi old and demolished Cinemas!!

Nairobi's 3 old cinemas (Playhouse, Capital, and Empire) are highlighted below. These were owned by African Consolidated Films which sold them to 20th Century Fox in the late 1950s!!

If you cannot figure out where these were, see the list matching the old road names to the current road names!! (list provided by R Shah)

 

Theatre Royal, Nairobi - view from the roof!!

 

View of Delamere Avenue (now Kenyatta Avenue) from the rooftop of Theatre Royal (now Cameo Cinema building). This gives a different view of the monument (see previous post) in front of the building! Delamere used to be called 6th Avenue as it was the 6th street from the railway station! Top right you can see the Avenue Hotel!

Theatre Royal, Nairobi

 

Theatre Royal, Nairobi

The building in the center was later renamed Cameo Cinema which most of us remember!. This photo was taken prior to Uhuru as seen by the Union Jack flag on the left. There appears to be a ceremony around a war memorial in front of the theatre building on Delamere Avenue and what is now Kenyatta Avenue

Silver Cinema, Kisumu, Kenya

 

Moons Cinema, Mombasa

 

The day in Oct 1971 when parliament demanded to know the profits made from Kenya's first locally produced Swahili film MLEVI !!

 Now this is interesting. MLEVI was a locally produced, black and white film in Swahili that was hugely popular since its release in 1968!.

By 1971 word in the streets was that the producers Ragbir Singh, and Kenya Film Corporation had made lots of money while the actors had been paid very low wages!!

So in October 1971 one member of parliament demanded to know how much money MLEVI made since 1969 (see hansard below), how much money KFC made as distributor and more importantly how much money was paid to the local actors!!

The mp did not get far in getting answers. The Assistant Minister of Information and Broadcasting said as the producer Ragbir Singh and his company African Producers was a local private company it was not possible to know the revenue and profits!! The Assistant Minister refused to divulge how much the government distributor Kenya Film Corporation made, essentially saying that would place KFC at a competitive disadvantage.

Even more frustrating for the mp was that the Assistant Minister said it was not right for the government to find out the details of a private agreement between the producers, that is, a private company and the actors, and that it was for the actors to assure themselves that their money they made was justified!!

The speaker of the house then intervened and refuted the mp's conclusion that the Assistant Minister had said the actors should take the producers to court!!

This reminds me of Sean Connery who was paid only $30,000 to make the first James Bond movie Dr No before anyone knew it was going to be a blockbuster. He was paid close $1m for the last Bond movie he acted in Diamonds are Forever!! Lucky are the actors who manage to negotiate a percentage of the revenue!!