Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Film exhibitors seek sops for rural cinema theatres

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, MARCH 3. The Tamil Nadu Film Exhibitors Association (Coimbatore, Nilgiris Districts Branch) has thanked the Chief Minister for the concessions extended to the tinsel industry and has sought some specific sops for saving the rural cinema houses.

In a memorandum to the Chief Minister, the President, R. Ramakrishnan and Secretaries of the association, R. Narayanasamy and S. Balasubramanian, pointed out that the sops had in fact saved cinemas from becoming extinct. However, struggling rural cinemas required more concession for survival, they said.

To protect these "C" centre theatres, the association sought enhancement of licensing period (the validity of the stability certificate for electrical and building structure) from three to five years for theatres that are less than 50 years old.

The memorandum urged the Government to relax the condition that buildings that were 20 years old could be granted stability certificate with a validity for five years. The age of the theatres eligible for such a certificate should be made 50 years instead of 20 years. The rule that every application for renewal shall be made at least one month before the expiry of the existing licence must also be relaxed. Belated applications could be allowed without any interruption in functioning, if the licence fee stipulated by the department concerned had been paid.

Additional burden

Production of films division certificates should not be made compulsory for submitting the licence renewal application, since village cinema theatres were suffering several difficulties in screening newsreels, they said. Given the poor collections paying rentals for newsreels was an additional burden. Transit facilities also add to the burden faced by these struggling C centre cinema theatres. As an interim measure at least rural cinema theatres should be exempted from newsreel certificate.

The present rule of levying 50 per cent tax on dubbed films aimed at protecting the Tamil films should be reconsidered at least for rural theatres. As the tax rate was very heavy, it must be levied on a par with other films. The present taxation pattern discouraged screening of dubbed movies in villages. Hence, one of the demands was that the tax should be brought down to ten per cent for village theatres.

Tax exemption for movies, which were at least three-years old (from the date of release) for C centre cinema houses in rural areas, should also be considered. Similarly, the licensing period could be made six years for touring talkies with a three-year licensing at one stroke and a subsequent renewal for the next three years would save these struggling cinema houses from considerable expenditure.

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