Sitting under the stars: What is it like to catch a movie inside IIT Madras’ Open Air Theatre?

Staying back with umbrellas in the rain to a deer’s unexpected but dramatic cameo, what is it like to catch a movie at IIT Madras’ Open Air Theatre?

A giant wall has been the sole witness to seasons of the year and scores of IITians who graduate from Chennai every year. This long-standing wall, kissed by the pokey branches of trees on either side, and embraced by the hum of the wind, lights up once every week with moving images that casts luminous shadows on its spectators.

It is often said that cinemas offer the means to a community-watching experience. But IIT-M’s little-known Open Air Theatre (OAT) takes the argument further: sitting under the stars on a moonlit evening to catch a Hollywood blockbuster or an Indian masala film has its own charms. In case of a boring movie, you have the luxury of lying still and gazing at the stars, singing in chorus with the evening birds. If you are lucky, a blackbuck might even gate crash the movie.

When a movie is played at OAT, nothing stops the screening. Not even the rains. There have been instances where people stayed back with their umbrellas held open. (This is where some of your wildest date night dreams come true!)

But nothing beats the palpable thrill and collective high that ran on the campus during the India vs Sri Lanka World Cup final in 2011, when Dhoni hit that last-ball six. It was perhaps the first time a cricket match was projected at OAT for the campus folks. These are just a cream of a treasure trove of memories one would associate with OAT.

The space was closed for renovation just before the pandemic. Two years on, the theatre has now been reopened for screenings with the recently-released Samrat Prithviraj as the opening film. “We haven’t renovated the theatre for a long time and then came lockdowns. Now that things are back to normal, we thought we should start screening films again, and students are also back on the campus,” says Jitendra Sangwai, who took over as president of Film Screening Club, IIT-M, last month.

A professor with the Chemical Engineering Department, Jitendra’s role as the president is to ensure smooth-sailing of operations — from selection of movies and taking in suggestions from students and staff to overseeing finances and negotiating with local distributors.

Designed after the Roman amphitheatre, OAT has a seating capacity of 6,000 with its central stage measuring 120 feet X 80 feet, sporting a 50-feet-wide, 24-feet-tall screen. It has four entry-exit gates: main, family, student and garden.