Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images We are a theatre for the public: unlike other multiplexes, we don’t overcharge and we play cinema for the mass.”Ĭustomers watch Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge at the Maratha Mandir.
“I personally have seen the movie more than 20 times in these last 20 years. “I am very proud of having been able to screen DDLJ over all these years, and am overwhelmed with the response of the people,” said Manoj Desai, the executive director of Maratha Mandir. It has run daily at 11.15am at the cinema ever since it was released in 1995, “the longest for any film in the history of Indian cinema”, according to Rafiq Gangjee, vice-president of marketing and communications of Yash Raj Films. And so the record-breaking film was reinstated.ĭirected by the son of king of desi (south Asian) romcoms, Aditya Chopra, DDLJ is the story of two star-crossed lovers of Indian origin born and brought up in London, who are in their own way defying the traditions of their conservative parents’ generation and creating a mix of the best of the east and west for themselves. According to Yash Raj Films, the production house behind the film, the sudden announcement “resulted in a spontaneous and an overwhelming outcry from the cinema-going audience, as well as dedicated fans of the movie, expressing their shock and disappointment”. There could have been few cinema-goers left in Mumbai who had not seen it.īut no sooner had it been revealed that DDLJ, as it is known, was being taken off the silver screen than the protests began. But it had already been running for 1,009 weeks at the Maratha Mandir cinema – a record for India. True, they thought, the film was undoubtedly popular in India. When a Mumbai picture house decided to discontinue the run of the Bollywood classic Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the managers expected little in the way of backlash.