Rio Cinema Archives

Can you remember the Bioscope days? – By Tilak S. Fernando Ceylon Today Daily-Columns- September 13, 2022 I received this information on the metamorphosis of ‘Colombo cinemas’ sent by a friend based in London. It was a text by a historian, Asiff Hussein. Hussein gives a historical account going back to the ‘tent’ days when the ‘silent’ English movies were shown. He deals with the history of the Colombo cinema, its evolution, and the development of cinema halls in Colombo, Sri Lanka. According to Asiff Hussein, an Englishman named Warwick Major was the first person to show silent English films in a ‘tent’ at the site of the old Regal theatre grounds. In the early1900s, the movies were called bioscopes. The American Consul for Ceylon, Stillman Eells, wrote to American Motion Pictures in 1931 explaining how a touring ‘Electric Bioscope’ was screened. Those films were shown in various venues ...

Navaratnam of Navah and Rio theatres – by Smriti Daniel Photo source: CinemaTreasures Rio Cinema Slave Island Opening Day ! It’s hard to believe this complex was once amongst the area’s best known landmarks. When the Rio opened its doors in 1965, it was to offer Sri Lankans their first sight of a 70mm TODD-AO projection system. In the audience on the opening night was a man only a month away from his fourth – and longest – stint as Prime Minister (Dudley Senanayake) and a young girl who would go on to become Sri Lanka’s President (Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga), 29 years later. This Mr Navaratnam’s son is the man I meet, in a room behind the box office downstairs. His name is Ratnarajah Navaratnam, known to all as Thambi (meaning little brother, as he was the youngest of his siblings) and he was in Colombo in the July of 1983. His ...