Alipurduar will get a cinema hall again on Friday after a gap of nearly two decades, restoring big-screen entertainment to a town whose residents currently travel to Cooch Behar or Falakata to watch films. The new single-screen facility, located in Sovagunj on Samuktala Road opposite the town’s bus terminus, has been set up by local businessman Arindam Ghosh.
The fully air-conditioned hall has 103 seats and will include a café for visitors. Ghosh said the venue would hold five shows a day, with a different film scheduled for each show. The hall will screen films in English, Bengali and Hindi, offering audiences a choice of languages.
The opening has drawn attention because Alipurduar once had four cinema halls. Those venues supported more than film screenings: shops operated outside them and local businesses depended on the footfall and associated activity. With the halls gone, residents lost a familiar town-centre leisure facility as well as a local destination connected to small-scale commerce.
For nearly 20 years, residents wanting to watch a film on the big screen have had to make an additional journey to Cooch Behar or Falakata. The distance has made cinema-going a more time-consuming activity, particularly for people who would otherwise have used a facility within the town. Residents had been demanding the return of a cinema hall for a long time.
Ghosh said his decision was driven by personal experience and the lack of a local facility rather than an immediate focus on profit or loss. “In our younger days, I used to watch films with friends. But now, there is not a single cinema hall in the town, and people have to travel to other places to watch movies,” he said. He added that advance online booking would be available.
The opening-day response has already provided an early indication of local interest. Tickets for the 3pm and 6pm shows had sold out ahead of the inauguration, while limited tickets remained for the other three shows. Ghosh said those shows were expected to sell out within the following 24 hours.
Subrata Sarkar, a cinema enthusiast from Alipurduar, welcomed the development and said he hoped residents would use the hall instead of travelling to Cooch Behar and Falakata. The facility is opening at a time when single-screen cinemas across north Bengal are facing survival challenges, making its performance dependent on sustained local attendance and the viability of its five-show operating model.
