Plaza cinema, Mumbai

Plaza is a cinema hall in the Dadar locality of Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra an Indian state. It was bought by Sakharam Govindji Keni from a Parsi owner and is given on lease to V Shantaram in the 1930s. A 2005 Times of India reports informs that V. Shantaram trust sold their rights to run the cinema to Himani & Co., and that Kiran Shantaram, V. Shantaram's son and a trustee of the V. Shantaram trust was the general manager of the cinema. It considers the Cinema a legend.^[1] The cinema has a single screen and a capacity of 880 seats.^[2] Kiran Shantaram is a former sheriff of Mumbai and the head of the Asian Film Foundation. It was one of the three cinema halls where films seventh Asian Film Festival were screened.^[3] It is an important theatre for the screening of Marathi cinema.^[1] According to Marathi film critic Amit Bhandari it "is not a mere theatre but the reflection of aspirations of more than three generations of actors... Marathi theatre has given stalwart character artistes to both Marathi and Hindi movies. From Neelu Phule, Shreeram Lagu, Bhakti Barve, Nana Patekar, Reema Lagu, to Laxmikant Berde, Makarand Anaspure and many others — they have all stood outside the Shivaji Mandir drama theatre gates and looked across the street at Plaza hoping to see their faces smiling down from the hoardings..."^[4] It was one of the 13 places where 1993 bomb blasts occurred in Mumbai on 12 March 1993.^[5] 10 persons died and 37 were injured. This blast occurred at 3.13 pm IST.^[6] The Nana Patekar, Raaj Kumar movie Tirangaa was playing at the hall. The movie started at 3.00 pm a little after the earlier show had finished. There were 881 spectators in the hall. Shantaram later recalled that had the bomb gone off during the change over there would have been hundreds of casualties.^[7]

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