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:
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