History
Started by the Veecumsee Family, Safire opened its door to the public in 1964. The first movie to play in Safire was Cleopatra. Safire was perhaps the first 70 mm theatre in India. It was spacious, if a bit spartan in furniture, and for the first few years screened only English language films. My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, Lawrence of Arabia, Funny Girl, and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World were some of the early movies.
Later Safire supposedly ran into some problems with availability of films. They contracted with Sovexport films and for a period many films from Soviet Union were screened here. Solaris by Tarkovsky was one of the few memorable films. Safire also screened morning shows on Sundays, when relatively non commercial films from India's many art film directors were screened. Pather Panchali Trilogy, Pratidwandi, Seemabaddha, and Jana Aranya were some such films screened and were quite popular with the city's multi-lingual audience, who did not have many other such venues.
Blue Diamond was famous for its continuous shows and was extremely popular with the business travellers and the youth, being the only one of its type in India. The shows ran from 1 p.m. to post midnight 1 a.m. One could get in any time and stay till closing time, if one did not leave the foyer. Students loved it as it provided a place to retreat from the heat of Chennai, and also to view films repeatedly. Blue Diamond screened almost always only English films.
Both Blue Diamond and Emerald were small theatres with about 300 seats at the most. Emerald screened primarily Hindi and Tamil films.
Read more about this topic: Safire Theatre Complex
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