How Yusuf stitched cinematic dreams into frames that defined generations

From cotton cloth to silver, plastic, and LED screens, one family has illuminated the stories that define a century of Indian cinema

Devika Rani in a liplock with Himanshu Rai (Karma, 1933) or Dilip Kumar falling in love with Nargis (Andaz, 1949) happened on a cotton screen. That was the material cinema screens were made of when British, Russian, and German studios formed the core of the Indian movie business. By the time the first Indian films, Pundalik (1912) and Raja Harishchandra (1913), appeared, the business was already well underway. In the 1920s, silver-coated screens arrived, producing brighter images, but the basic material remained fabric. 

Cut to the 1950s. Cinemascope and curved screens arrived. The studio system broke up. But Indians’ appetite for cinema continued to rise. 

In its bid to source locally, Westrex, an American screen manufacturer, stumbled upon Yusuf A — an accountant, film buff, and friend of a certain Mr Sengupta from Westrex. When Sengupta asked Yusuf if he could make screens, he jumped at the chance, even though he didn’t know the first thing about them. Soon, Yusuf, his wife, two brothers, and a couple of workers set about stitching a cloth screen. Westrex liked the result, and the first Galalite screen was put up at Metro Cinema (now part of PVR-Inox) in Mumbai; Yusuf was nicknamed ‘Galabhaiwala’. 

The Mumbai-based Galalite Screens is now among the top screen manufacturers in the world, alongside Dublin-based Harkness Screens and others. Of the 2,300 screens Galalite made last year, about 800–900 were sold in India. The rest were largely sold in Europe through a plant in Poland. By the time Yusuf Galabhaiwala, the original Yusuf’s grandson and director of operations at Galalite, joined the family business in 2007, the multiplex boom was underway. The stories that shaped Indian cinema were the ones he grew up on. 

The fun years 

“My grandfather used to tell us that when the video cassette recorder (VCR) arrived, cinemas were shutting down. There were days when we would come to the office, sit, and not a single phone would ring,” says Galabhaiwala. 

Early cable operators used to hook entire buildings onto one VCR to play the latest films. The number of people going to theatres plummeted, and so did revenues. Soon, fewer screens were being built or replaced. 

The heyday of the 1960s and 1970s was over. 

In the mid-1960s, Galalite replaced fabric screens with plastic ones featuring invisible seams and behind-the-screen speaker placement. New filmmakers were creating interesting and successful cinema, from Aradhana and Waqt to Bhuvan Shome and An Evening in Paris. By the 1970s, however, bitterness over the lack of economic growth began to show in films like Deewar and Mere Apne. The quality and variety, however, remained phenomenal. Amanush, Aandhi, Sholay, and Ankur stand out. 

By 1979, Galalite had installed 3,500 screens in India. 

Until then, there wasn’t much distance between good and successful films. That gap grew in the 1980s and 1990s, as the business came under pressure — first from the VCR, then cable, and finally satellite TV. These decades produced some of the worst cinema, alongside gems like Ardh Satya, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (both 1983), and Nayakan (1987). Screen technology evolved. In 1986, a fully automatic perforating machine  was introduced to maximise sound effects in cinema.

 

“In 2002–2003, we saw another pickup,” says Galabhaiwala. Multiplexes had been given a tax holiday in Maharashtra, triggering a boom in screen-building. But cracking price-conscious multiplex chains was tough. Galalite’s pricing, though lower than Harkness, was about 5–10 per cent above local brands. Interestingly, it was single screens that helped. 

A bulk (5,000) of the 8,700 screens in India today are single screens. “In smaller areas, say the cluster of Tiruppur (in Tamil Nadu) and within a 300–400 kilometre radius, there is often one common sound engineer across 15–20 single screens. If a bulb has to be changed in the projector, or if the acoustics need tuning, he’s the guy,” says Galabhaiwala.

 

Single-screen owners are exacting customers who measure everything, and “sound engineers are their influencers. We had to serve them more. But once you prove your product, it becomes easy. Slowly, the multiplex guys also came in”, he adds. Around this time, the European market took off, thanks to replacement demand. “Over 80 per cent of the screens we sell globally are replacements, not new builds,” says Galabhaiwala. 

Unlike new projects, which take a few months, replacement screens have to be installed overnight because  theatres lose business every day they  are shut. That explains why Galalite chose to set up a manufacturing unit in Poland in 2017.

 

The big blow came during the pandemic, when revenues fell from roughly ₹20 crore to ₹17 crore (and are rising again). The main challenge going forward is not streaming — it is replacing all the screens with light-emitting 

diode technology, the ‘Next Big Thing’ in screen technology. A far cry from cotton.