Liberty Cinema is an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

1200 seater single screen

Movie theatre A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Since the cinema was built in 1947, the year of Indian Independence, its founder ''Habib Hoosein'' decided to name it "Liberty". Liberty screens

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Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

movies. ''David Vinnels'' and ''Brent Skelly'' describe Liberty Cinema as "an exquisite jewel box of rococo decoration enhanced by a coloured lighting scheme suggesting a fairyland far away from the bustle and tumult in the streets outside" in their book ''Bollywood Showplaces: Cinema Theatres in India''.Page 56 On the fifth floor of the Liberty Cinema building there is a small 30 seater hall, ''Liberty Mini''. Decorated with art from the pre-independence period, it is used for press previews and private screenings. Liberty has been the location of movie premiers of several movies, such as

Mughal-e-Azam ''Mughal-e-Azam'' () is a 1960 Indian epic historical drama film produced and directed by K. Asif. Starring Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, and Durga Khote, it follows the love affair between Mughal Prince Salim (who went ...

(a 1960 blockbuster Bollywood movie).Page 79 Several iconic movies have premiered and run for a long time at Liberty Cinema.

Mother India ''Mother India'' is a 1957 Indian epic drama film, directed by Mehboob Khan and starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar and Raaj Kumar. A remake of Khan's earlier film '' Aurat'' (1940), it is the story of a poverty-stricken village wom ...

, a

film ran for a whole year starting October 1957 at Liberty.Page 65 Almost three decades later, one of Bollywood’s most successful movies

Hum Aapke Hain Kaun ''Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!'' () also known by the initialism ''HAHK'', is a 1994 Indian Hindi-language musical romantic drama film written and directed by Sooraj Barjatya and produced by Rajshri Productions. The film stars Madhuri Dixit and Salm ...

ran for 105 weeks in regular shows and 16 weeks in the matinee show in total from 1994 onwards at Liberty (completing its 100th week on the run in August 1996Page 171). In total the film ran for 2341 shows in 847 days from its first run.Page 363 To celebrate this, noted painter M F Husain put up a canvas from his series celebrating the Woman as 'Shakti' at the foyer of Liberty Cinema. This piece of art was based on the lead actress of the movie,

Madhuri Dixit Madhuri Dixit Nene (née Dixit; born 15 May 1967) is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi films. A leading actress of Indian cinema, she has appeared in over 70 films. Noted by critics for her beauty, dancing skills, and characters ...

.Page 179 With the entry of multiplex theatres in Mumbai which have been given tax breaks, single screen theatres like Liberty are finding it hard to do business. The current owner, ''Nazir Hoosein'' (son of the founder) has rented out part of the Liberty Cinema building for office use to supplement his income.

References

{{Tourist attractions in Mumbai Cinemas in Mumbai Theatres completed in 1947 1947 establishments in India