Visitors from all over the country flocked to the Movieplex exhibit, where they were invited to step inside the miniature museum and explore a curious collection of memorabilia from Shanta Rao Dutt’s filmmaking travels.  Leading Dutt experts Professor Leonard Plate and Miss Lucy Forster were on hand to explain all about the legendary movie pioneer and his colourful family history.

Guests listened in awe to the incredible story of how Shanta met Lassie the world’s most famous dog, and how the filmmaking pioneer influenced Spielberg, before being ushered into the plush interior of the miniature cinema. There visitors watched a lovingly restored nine-minute-movie from the family archives: Dutt’s silent film “Docker and the Rose” shot on the Liverpool docks in 1920.

During the welcome speeches, Ajay Chhabra, creative director of Movieplex partner Nutkhut presented Natasha Rao with a commemorative glass swan ornament, in memory of Shanta’s wife Mary Dutt’s love of swans, and in honour of Natasha Rao’s own untiring charitable work for the Dutt Society for the Preservation of Swans, established by her great grand aunt.

On Thursday 31 July 2008, Natasha Rao Dutt, actress and animal rights activist, unveiled a blue plaque commemorating her great grand uncle at 19 Hope Street, Liverpool. The address is the site of the boarding house where Shanta Rao Dutt stayed during his stay in Liverpool in 1920, and where his future wife Mary Dutt, née Emmet, worked as a chamber maid. Actress Natasha Rao flew in from Los Angeles for the occasion, and arrived for the ceremony in a vintage car of the same model as that featured in her great grand uncle’s silent movie “Docker and the Rose”.