Safire Theatre complex
Coordinates: 13°03′14″N 80°15′09″E / 13.0540°N 80.2526°E
The Safire Theatre complex was India's first multi-theatre complex located in the southern city of Chennai that functioned from 1964 to the mid-1990s. The theatre complex located on Mount Road (now Anna Salai) consisted of three screening halls, namely, Safire, Blue Diamond, and Emerald. While the largest named Safire screened Hollywood movies, the others, Emerald and Diamond screened Indian films.
Safire is believed to have been the first 70mm theatre in India.
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 multilingual audience, who did not have many other such venues in that time period.
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