Islamabad: CDA plans two high-tech cinemas

[Naveed Yaseen]

Islamabad
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 Saturday that the Authority would set up Cineplax 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 past, the capital had three cinemas including Kohsar Cinema, Melody Cinema and Nafdec Cinema, the third one having two screens, but none of them is functional these days.

Cineplax is a Pakistan-based company that has country’s first nationally branded cineplax 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 (72 ft) wide and 16.1 metres (53 ft) high, but can be larger. The CDA official said the Authority is mulling to build cineplax 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 the country.

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