Matterden CFC

In 1926, a single-screen theatre was built with the purpose of showcasing mainstream and regional cinema. Blink, and you’ll probably miss it; it stood at a corner of a busy street where Mumbai’s Lower Parel met the connecting areas of Elphinstone Road and Worli. As the years went by, so did the city’s single-screens. But one particular theatre survived, and with it, a hundred years’ worth of cinema eras and movements. The theatre was called Deepak Cinema, and it still stands, the same single-screen in the same Mumbai corner with decades of history weighing down overs its trademark wooden arch - one of the last of its kind. 

So naturally, there couldn’t have been a better place to start a film viewing experience that engages an entire community of cinephiles, giving them the rarest of opportunities to revisit some of the most globally revered films the world of cinema has ever seen. This club of collaborative film-viewing crunched onto The Deepak’s single-screen is called the Matterden Centre for Films and Creation. Established in the year 2014, Matterden CFC has brought in an entirely new space and consumption pattern for movie-lovers throughout the city that flock every Sunday, including yours truly, to watch everything from English classics to foreign language films, to modern winners. 

Being a true film nerd myself, I’ve been known to traverse the Mumbai locals on several occasions, just to see the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Girl with a Pearl Earring brought back to life on the silver screen. A part of its 26 Sundays, 26 Films program, these movies are among several others that permanently redefined cinema or spearheaded film movements. So if you’ve ever cursed yourself for not being alive in the time of Citizen Kane, Psycho or even as far back as Metropolis, you can now see them at hundred bucks a pop in the oldest single-screen in Mumbai. A feat I’d never thought imaginable but am eternally grateful for - a feeling I’m certain resonates amongst several other film-goers who now have a compelling reason to leave their homes even on the laziest of Sunday afternoons. 

Everything from its nostalgia-ridden infrastructure to its excellently curated roster of international and national classics, makes The Deepak’s once-in-a-lifetime film-screenings every bit the city’s most tasteful film hub that it is. So if there was ever a time and place to revisit the film noirs of the 50s, or the brat packs of the 80s, it would be on a Sunday afternoon and it would be at Matterden CFC.  

More on Matterden CFC here. 


Text Shristi Singh