When word of the travelling cinema spreads through Charanpur in Ashutosh Gowariker’s movie Swades , the excitement of the villagers is palpable. As an audience, we’re drawn into the magical realism of a film within a film, one that doesn’t require Dolby surround sound or cushy seats for the experience to come alive. Little is known about these nomadic theatres that have been part of a 70-year-old tradition flourishing on the margins of the Indian film industry. For photographer and filmmaker Amit Madheshiya, the myriad emotions that wash over the faces of the rural audience inspired a photography project titled The Cinema Travellers.
Presented by Galleryske and Photoink, the colour photographs offer a glimpse into a world that’s transfixed by another, in an era where large circus tents were hooked to the back of gigantic trucks and films were screened using hand-cranked projectors. The Cinema Travellers began in 2008, and through the span of eight years, included an award-winning documentary film by the same name, co-directed with Shirley Abraham. The seed of the project was sown at a time when urban India was transitioning from single screen cinemas to multiplexes.
Unchanged wonder
After their Masters degree in Mass Communication from Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, Madheshiya and Abraham began questioning the history of cinema as an experience. Their curiosity led them on a rather unexpected journey across the country, where they encountered the travelling theatres. They discovered the age-old annual tradition, when people gather for religious fairs in Western Maharashtra, Vidarbha and Marathwada.
“I remember the sight vividly. It was golden hour, the sun wasn’t very harsh, and in front of us stood 10 large tents, all playing movies simultaneously,” says Madheshiya over the telephone. He recalls how moved he was by the mixture of sounds from the ‘movie-halls’ and knowing instantly that this was something incredibly special.
The duo visited Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal too, where these moving cinemas played, but it was the unique ecosystem of film distribution in Maharashtra that they found most fascinating. Licensed companies like the Sumedh Touring Talkies and Akshay Touring Talkies that feature in the documentary film have an entire distribution model in place, which include trucks to carry projectors, reels, tents and crew. “Anadikaal,” say the locals, suggesting the system existed since the beginning of time.
They also say that some of the showmen, as they were called, bought projectors from an old Parsi gentleman who sat on the footpath outside Roxy cinema in Mumbai during the late 40s and early 50s. “Our discovery became an instructive experience, about the unchanged wonder of the movies, and the mutable modes and technologies through which audiences experience it,” writes Madheshiya in his artist’s statement.
He spent the first three years on research, and then acquired grants to continue the documentary, but the idea of making portraits of the spellbound audiences surfaced much later. In vibrant images that look much like film stills themselves, one can see emotions flicker across faces — childlike wonder, apprehension, anxiety, sadness, sometimes they’re just dazed.
Whether it’s the wide-eyed 20-something with her hands across her mouth, the yellow-shirted man who can pass off as a Bollywood hero himself, or the albino child with a tear streaming down her cheek, it’s apparent the subjects are unaware of the camera and transfixed only by the screen in front of them.
Madheshiya uses the light from the film to illuminate his muses, along with a backlight from the projector to create drama. It conjures up an atmosphere where you can almost hear the movie playing in the background, coupled by the chuckles and gasps of the mesmerised spectators. The challenge of shooting in low light meant that the photographer was using long exposures for a subject that’s continuously moving, hence creating a motion blur. “I didn’t want to use the flash because it was such a personal space, one I didn’t want to intrude upon,” he explains.
Madheshiya often walked to the front of the cinema hall before the movie began to present himself to the audience so they weren’t surprised by his presence. “I’m not an aggressive photographer, I am a shy person and like to work quietly. Once I saw that a person was completely absorbed in the film, that’s when I would slowly inch towards them,” explains the photographer who took approximately an hour to make a single portrait.
“If I made one portrait in the run of one film, I would be satisfied.”
The project won Madheshiya the World Press Photo in 2011, the World Photography Award in 2009 and 2011, and the Grand Prize at the Humanity Photo Awards in 2009. “The simplest ideas are so difficult to arrive at. It was only when I saw the tents filled with people did I realise that the story is in the people who have sustained this tradition,” he says.
Doubling up as a home
The only time that the photographer was unable to make portraits was when his mind and energy were focused on the cinematography of the documentary. “It wasn’t possible to change gears, and it was those moments that I regretted,” he says. One such was when an old man with a long beard wandered into the tent with his goat to watch a film. But he was seated in the shadows at the back of the hall, and Madheshiya had no choice but to let the photograph go. He makes up for it with a surreal shot of a man with his monkey, both equally absorbed in the film. “While looking at these still images, you’re reminded of the iconicity of a cinematic image. That is the commentary I wanted to evoke,” he says.
In these eight years, Madheshiya has seen everything in these tents, from James Cameron’s Avatar to Dharmendra-starrer Loha , Bollywood blockbusters like Om Shanti Om to old Marathi films like Sauticha Kunku and mythological movies. And when night sets in and the children have exited the tents, an all-male audience strolls in to watch soft porn.
Sometimes, the travelling cinemas double up as temporary homes.
Madheshiya talks of how the tents in Maharashtra’s forests served as respite from the blistering heat during the day and from the bitter cold nights. For villagers who can’t afford rooms in the nearby towns, spending Rs. 30 to sleep through a film is a good bet.
As technology sweeps across the country, the villages too are changing. The loudspeaker that once beckoned people to the movies is now drowned out by a DVD player or music on the smartphone. Cinema might be changing its skin, but Madheshiya’s photographs are testament to a time when a dark tent housed a collective sentiment — one of pure fascination, of people soaking in the magic of what we’ll always know as the big screen.
An avid traveller, the writer is interested in art, photography, culture and history. @ZahraAmiruddin
ON SHOW The Cinema Travellers, Photoink, New Delhi, till October 21
