Modhumita is a

movie theater A movie theater (American English) or cinema (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), also known as a movie house, cinema hall, picture house, picture theater, the movies, the pictures, or simply theater, is a business ...

located in

Motijheel Motijheel () is a central business district and a thana of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is Dhaka's primary central business district, and also the nation's largest commercial and financial hub. Motijheel, located immediately adjacent to Dhaka's zero ...

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; , ), List of renamed places in Bangladesh, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital city, capital and list of cities and towns in Bangladesh, largest city of Bangladesh. It is one of the list of largest cities, largest and list o ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

. Modhumita Movies, one of the oldest movie theaters in the country, was closed on 17 March 2020 for

COVID-19 epidemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, but reopened on 15 October 2021.

History

The movie theater was founded by Siraj Uddin. He was a businessman from Dhaka, who owned a chemical factory. In 1967, the Bengali-language Indian film ''

Mahanagar ''Mahanagar'', aka ''The Big City'' (), is a 1963 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray. Starring Madhabi Mukherjee in the leading role and based on the short story ''Abataranika'' by Narendranath Mitra, it te ...

'' was screened in Balaka cinema hall in the city. As a movie enthusiast, Siraj desired to watch the film but failed to collect its ticket and stubbornly planned to build a movie theater. For the proposed name of the movie theater, he published an advertisement in ''

The Daily Ittefaq ''The Daily Ittefaq'' (, Bangla pronunciation: ) is a Bengali-language daily newspaper. Founded in 1949 by Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani and Yar Mohammad Khan, it is the oldest and one of the most circulated newspapers in Bangladesh. The newspape ...

''. Many people sent names to him after seeing the advertisement. Among those names, he preferred the name "Modhumita" and offered a reward of and a show ticket of the movie theater to whoever suggested this name.

Abdul Jabbar Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan may refer to: * Abdul Jabbar Khan (20th-century politician) (1902–1984), speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan * Abdul Jabbar Khan (director) (1916–1993), Bangladeshi filmmaker * Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan Abdul Jabb ...

, the 6th Speaker of the

National Assembly of Pakistan The National Assembly of Pakistan, also referred to as ''Aiwān-ē-Zairīñ'', is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Pakistan, with the upper house being the Senate of Pakistan, Senate. As of 2023, the National Assem ...

, inaugurated the movie theater on 1 December 1967. The first film shown in Modhumita was ''

Cleopatra Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...

'', a 1963 American

epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

historical drama film A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents historical events and characters with varying degrees of fiction such as c ...

. Then the movie theater was equipped with magnetic sound facility. The movie theater used fragrances from Otis Perfume House in Mitford, Dhaka. In 1981, the first International Film Festival in Bangladesh was inaugurated in this movie theater. The movie theater closed on 17 March 2020 due to the government-imposed lockdown due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. As a result, the current owner of the movie theater, Iftekhar Uddin Naushad, faced monetary losses. However, he did not want to reopen Modhumita as he didn’t find anyone who wanted to release expensive films in such a situation. He decided to reopen the movie theater on 25 June 2021 and announced that Modhumita would screen ''

Nabab LLB ''Nabab LLB'' (also known as ''Nabab LLB: BACK FOR JUSTICE'') is a Bangladeshi legal drama film. The film is directed and written by Anonno Mamun and produced by Azmat Hossain under the banner of Celebrity Production. It is a courtroom drama bas ...

'' on that day but backed out from the decision for restrictions from the government. The movie theater was finally reopened on 15 October 2021 by showing the Bengali-language Indian film '' Baazi''.

Features

This movie theater has only one screen with 1000 seats. Here the seating system is divided into three parts. They are respectively known as dress circle, rear circle and middle circle. The movie theater has air conditioning, parking, toilets with

Dolby Digital Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3 (see below), is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression (except for Dolby Tr ...

sound system. Modhumita has four shows daily. There is a facility to show

3D films 3D films are motion pictures made to give an illusion of three-dimensional solidity, usually with the help of special glasses worn by viewers. 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema and later experienced a worldwide re ...

References

{{Commons Motijheel Thana Cinemas in Dhaka 1967 establishments in East Pakistan