Islamabad: Two high-tech cinemas planned in cinema-less capital

[Naveed Yaseen]

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has planned to set up two high-tech cinemas in the federal capital to bring back cinema culture to life and provide entertainment facility to the residents who are deprived of it since long.

A senior CDA official said Monday that the Authority would set up Cinepax and Imax cinemas providing excellent movie-going facility for the residents, particularly those residing in smaller sectors.

According to analysts, Islamabad may be the only capital around the world that does not have the cinema facility for its residents. In the past, the capital had three cinemas including Kohsar Cinema, Melody Cinema and Nafdec cinemas, the third one having two screens, but none of them is functional these days.

Cinepax is a Pakistan-based company that has country’s first nationally branded cinepax chain, starting in year 2004. The company is targeting the larger cities of the country including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan and Hyderabad and plans to build 120 screens in its first five years.

Imax (short for Image Maximum) is a film format created by Canada’s Imax Corporation that has the capacity to display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film display systems. A standard Imax screen is 22 metres (72ft) wide and 16.1 metres (53ft) high, but can be larger.

As of 2008, IMAX is the most widely used system for large- format, special-venue film presentations. The CDA official said the Authority is mulling to build cinepex near Lake View Park while the Imax may be built in residential sectors G or I.

He said the authority may also hire an international firm to build Imax cinema as it is high-tech 3D cinema and not yet so common in Pakistan.

To create the illusion of three-dimensional depth, the Imax 3D process uses two camera lenses to represent the left and right eyes.The two lenses are separated by an interocular to the average distance between a human’s eyes.

Renowned artist, Jamal Shah, in his comments about CDA’s plan, said it is appreciable as the residents had been deprived of movie-watching facility for long. He said the government should also restore Nafdec cinemas, what he said has been sold out in the past.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=142293