Hyderabad, April'04: MF Husain the acclaimed painter was in the city in connection with the opening of an exhibition of his paintings. In order to find out his Hyderabadi connection, Some time back, Reachout did drop in to his 'Cinema Ghar' on Road no: 12,Banjara Hills where we met MF Hussain himself. We were told that Hyderabad has been his adopted City and his wife and many of his relatives hail from the city. Infact he had purchased the land where the 'Cinema Ghar' is now housed, about 33 years back little knowing that it would one day shape into a art & Cinema museum. The entire building is quite magical with MF Husain's trade mark sketches cut out on the building itself.

It is a tribute to Indian cinema from the silence of Dada Phalke to the dazzle of Madhuri Dixit & Tabu. It's not a museum where works of Art and cans of films are embalmed to stay dead in the archives of history. Its a museum to celebrate life on canvas and silver screen like a village festival of live paintings on the walls and the moving images of song and dance on celluloid. Here the book-shelves contain words of film classics, Art forms, music from Bach to Beetles, Tansen to A.R.Rehman - Dance from Urvashi to Martha Graham to madam Madhuri and certainly not without the opening of Bill Gate. 

A novel feature of the museum is the special section devoted to making films without sound and colour; like in the early history of Indian Cinema with the running commentary on one side and the harmonium and tabla, on the other.  Every year there will be festival of specially made five-minute silent black and white films.The best entry will be awarded. Cinema Ghar will promote good cinema and also encourage original writing on cinema. It will store exhaustive information on world cinema and an archive of chosen classics. A library and a 40 seater cinema theatre equipped with Dolby sound ad DTS system will be the main feature of the Cinema Ghar here in Hyderabad.

MF Hussain who calls himself 'the son-in-law of Hyderabad is getting rave reviews for his latest film 'Meenaxi-The Tale of Three cities'.