Video Vignettes
The video vignettes, when collated together, make an anthology of how cinema
and its people live in the city of Bombay / Mumbai. The queries are more on the
materiality, sites, memories, aspirations and migration around the cinema
culture and decisively, not a study of fiction film narratives.
The films were co-produced with PSBT (Public Service Broadcast Trust) /
Doordarshan.
On viewing Cinema
Anna Sound Please, Madhavi Tangella, 2010, 20 mins
Across the sprawl of the city of Bombay exist illegal / unofficial shacks of cinema that double up for shelters and entertainment houses for migrant wage workers. The video theatres, always situated off the centres – under the flyover, behind the bus stop, next to the station - manage to remain invisible to the eyes of the gentry.
Certified Universal, Avijit Mukul Kishore, 2009, 15 mins
An impressionistic sketch of ‘the public’ as created by many cinemas.
Do Rafique, Rafiq Ellias, 2009, 10 mins
Rafeeq meets Rafique Bagdadi, an extraordinary living archive of the city and its cinema, and explores the cinema city through him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juGyMlmWYQ4
On the fringe of cinema
Dhananjay Kulkarni “Chandragupt”, Rrivu Laha, 10 mins
A film writer impersonates as a night watchman in the city of cinema. It is a quintessential yet heart wrenching story of a migrant aspirant.
Have You Dreamt Cinema? Hansa Thapliyal, 2009, 15 mins
Three women, who live in the neighbourhood of the largest film studio in the city, reflect on their formed and unformed relationships with the fantasy of a film on a large screen in a darkened theatre. Was it ever theirs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tisx-23-Y6c
The city wears its cinema
Sin City, Shrikant Agawane, 2009, 15 mins
On the filmography of crime in the city. It reverberates with Bombay cinema’s sounds of crime, its grandiloquent echo effects, percussion and music.
Dark Room, Renu Savant, 2009, 10 mins
On the basic materiality of cinema – the chemicals and the moving people. The film returns the image to its sources - so the water coming into the beach becomes the water in the trough of the image developing laboratory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IsbS4fOjR0
Director, Painter Shri Baburao Laadsaheb, Richa Hushing, 2010, 13 mins
On the sprawling settlement of Dharavi where, it says, that every conceivable good – both original and fake - is manufactured in the obscure sweatshops. Dream of cinema is just another such producible commodity.
Pila House, Abeer Gupta, 2010, 12 mins
Pila House was marked as the entertainment district by the British Government in 1857. Along with the bazaars, the ports, the red light area and the Congress House performers the Pila house theatres were the symbol of urban entertainment through the 20th century - transforming from variety entertainments to Parsi theatre to silent cinema to talkies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejpYAW7W_OA
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