Swamikannu Vincent

Samikannu Vincent (18 April 1883 – 22 April 1942) was a filmmaker and cinema exhibitor from Coimbatore, India. He was a pioneer in the movie business in South India. In 1905, he established tent cinemas where movies were projected in a makeshift tent in open spaces which were a precursor to modern day movie theaters. In 1914, he established Variety Hall in Coimbatore, which was one of the first permanent movie theatres in South India. He was later involved in the production and direction of Tamil movies.

Early life and family Samikannu Vincent was born on 18 April 1883 to Thambusamy in Coimbatore, Madras Presidency, India. He worked as a draftsman-clerk with South Indian Railway at Ponmalai in Tiruchirappalli. Samikannu died on 22 April 1942. Tamil film actor J. P. Chandrababu was married to one of the granddaughters of Samikannu.

Career During his career as a clerk with South Indian railway, Samikannu was exposed to short films exhibited by DuPont, a French film exhibitor. In 1905, When DuPont wanted to return home, Samikannu raised money to buy the projector, accessories and films used by DuPont for .

Samikannu established the first tent cinema at Madras called Edison's Grand Cinemamegaphone. The cinema hall initially screened silent films with commentary, later moving on to talkie films with the evolution of Indian cinema. However, in , Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu had already established Gaiety Theatre on Mount Road, as the first ever permanent cinema theatre in Madras and all of South India.

In 1916, he established a printing press near his theatre to print handbills. Called an electric printing works, he used the cinema house's power plant to power the machinery for the press.

In 1933, Samikannu along with Pioneer film company in Calcutta co-produced Valli Thirumanam, based on the story of Hindu God Murugan. He also co-produced other Tamil movies such as Sampoorna Harichandra and Subhadra Parinayam later. A Tamil documentary Pezhamozi (Silent Language) based on Samikannu's life was released in 2016.