KUMAR TALKIES
Synopsis
Kumar Talkies is a run-down cinema in small town Kalpi, where few films run longer than a few days, and each screening is missing a number of songs and dances, thanks to the projectionist's whims. Once owned by the filmmaker's father, it remembers better days, as seen unearthed through family testimonies and 8mm footage. Still, the faces of moviegoers reflected in the dark speak for themselves - the magic of cinema will never cease to captivate.
The film explores the relationship between Kalpi--a small town in northern India--and its only surviving cinema hall. The film chronicles Kalpi¡¦s economic decline and its citizens’s hopes and frustrations while taking a nostalgic look at the lost, lavish world of cinema. The film also considers the influence of television, which is gradually reducing the audience at the hall.
· Best Film: L’Alternativa, Barcelona
· Special Jury Citation: Zanzibar Film Festival
· National Award for Best Audiography, 1999
· Screenings at 0ver 40 International film festivals
· Produced with financial support from the Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam and India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore
Kumar Talkies is a run-down cinema in small town Kalpi, where few films run longer than a few days, and each screening is missing a number of songs and dances, thanks to the projectionist's whims. Once owned by the filmmaker's father, it remembers better days, as seen unearthed through family testimonies and 8mm footage. Still, the faces of moviegoers reflected in the dark speak for themselves - the magic of cinema will never cease to captivate.
The film explores the relationship between Kalpi--a small town in northern India--and its only surviving cinema hall. The film chronicles Kalpi¡¦s economic decline and its citizens’s hopes and frustrations while taking a nostalgic look at the lost, lavish world of cinema. The film also considers the influence of television, which is gradually reducing the audience at the hall.
· Best Film: L’Alternativa, Barcelona
· Special Jury Citation: Zanzibar Film Festival
· National Award for Best Audiography, 1999
· Screenings at 0ver 40 International film festivals
· Produced with financial support from the Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam and India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore
Director's Statement
Emerging technologies of image production widen the horizons of our knowledge and enhance our preparedness for coping with the world, but they do so by undermining and replacing already existing modes of reproduction, both traditional and modern. Through them, the exigencies of globalized culture come to bear on the collective imaginations of a town like Kalpi in northern India. Here we find cinema teetering on the edge of collapse, perpetuating alien dreams and borrowed desires far removed from the mundane-ness of existence. Kumar Talkies explores the relationship between Kalpi, a small town in northern India, and its only surviving cinema theater, a decrepit and cash-strapped shed located in a particularly dirty corner of the town. The film documents cinema as simultaneously a vehicle that conveys a remote, urban, imagination to a small town such as Kalpi, and a medium in which different people expect their localized existence to be captured and displayed.
Crew
Production Company: KUMAR TALKIES
Producer/Director/editing Pankaj Rishi Kumar
Location Sound, Sound Design Satheesh PM
Camera Avijit Mukul Kishore
Contact: kumartalkies@yahoo.com
Emerging technologies of image production widen the horizons of our knowledge and enhance our preparedness for coping with the world, but they do so by undermining and replacing already existing modes of reproduction, both traditional and modern. Through them, the exigencies of globalized culture come to bear on the collective imaginations of a town like Kalpi in northern India. Here we find cinema teetering on the edge of collapse, perpetuating alien dreams and borrowed desires far removed from the mundane-ness of existence. Kumar Talkies explores the relationship between Kalpi, a small town in northern India, and its only surviving cinema theater, a decrepit and cash-strapped shed located in a particularly dirty corner of the town. The film documents cinema as simultaneously a vehicle that conveys a remote, urban, imagination to a small town such as Kalpi, and a medium in which different people expect their localized existence to be captured and displayed.
Crew
Production Company: KUMAR TALKIES
Producer/Director/editing Pankaj Rishi Kumar
Location Sound, Sound Design Satheesh PM
Camera Avijit Mukul Kishore
Contact: kumartalkies@yahoo.com
posted by pankaj rishi kumar @ 6:42 AM
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