The last cinema hall in Feni demolished

With demolishing the district town’s last movie theatre, Feni now has no cinema hall left.

Dulal Cinema Hall, Feni town’s last remaining movie theatre, was demolished on Wednesday due to a steep decline in the number of audiences. A multi-storey shopping mall will be built on the site where the cinema hall stood.

Safiuddin Belal, owner of Dulal Cinema Hall said, “We had to seek assistance from law enforcement to tackle the crowd during a screening of blockbusters such as ‘Beder Meye Josna’ and ‘Rupban’.”

“However, the number of audiences started declining after 2015,” Belal told UNB. The cinema hall had eight “VIP” seats (tickets for each cost Tk 100). It also had 80 “first-class” seats (Tk 60 each).

Belal said that “second” and “third-class” seats had been discontinued for the last three years.

There were six cinema halls in the town and the adjacent Dagonbhuiya upazila. One after another, curtains fell on Feni district’s silver screens as the owners were left with no choice but to demolish them.

The lack of quality films, coupled with the steep decline in audience, killed the town’s cinema hall business.

The four cinema halls in Feni town were Dulal Cinema Hall, Surat Mahal, Bilashi Cinema Hall, and Kanan Cinema Hall. There were two other cinema halls — Beauty Cinema Hall in Fulghazi upazila and Jharna Cinema Hall in Dagonbhuiyan.

Thousands of movie lovers from the district’s remote areas used to flock to these halls to see films with their families and friends.

In 1952, sports organiser Khairul Eshak opened Dulal Cinema Hall on Feni town’s Railway Station Road. Years later, Afzalur Rahman opened the Surat cinema hall in the city’s Zero Point area. However, the hall was demolished and later replaced by Feni Super Market after Afzalur Rahman’s son Bacchu Mia took over the ownership.