Quite often, promising initiatives in parallel cinema in the State have petered out right at the beginning. They have failed to move beyond the initial step, stopping much short of becoming a movement. When the Kazhcha Film Forum, a collective of film lovers and filmmakers, got together last year to launch the ‘Cinema Vandi’ (Cinema cab), quite a few were apprehensive about its success.
The format was simple. The group would travel through the villages and towns across Kerala, screening the film at film societies, arts clubs, libraries, educational institutions and wherever they are invited. The forum’s own crowd-funded production Oraalpokkam , directed by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, thus travelled and organised hundreds of screenings across the State over four-five months. By the end of that trip, a movement had taken birth.
On Monday, the ‘Cinema Vandi’ started travelling again from the capital city. Bina Paul, film editor and former festival director of the International Film Festival of Kerala, flagged off the cab. Shavam , an hour-long film by Don Palathara, will be the movie that will travel across the State. The film takes us through the happenings in a household after a family member dies. Shot in monochrome, it is a realistic portrayal of the conversations and behaviour of the relatives and visitors following the death and during the last rites.
We get to see the deceased’s brothers and uncles having a heated debate over the funeral expenses, the priest using the occasion to ask for donations for a new church building, the funeral videographers directing the scene to get the best shot, relatives gossiping about the deceased’s wife, children having fun unmindful of the situation, and a myriad other familiar scenes.
Don Palathara, the director, said that he found the ‘Cinema Vandi’ to be the most effective way to take his film to the masses, in the absence of a proper distribution model for independent cinema.
“When I came here after having spending eight years abroad and with a film school stint, I had no idea about the independent cinema movement in Kerala. I got in touch with filmmakers Sanal and Sajin Baabu as their films were being most discussed at that time. Then I got to travel with the ‘Cinema Vandi’ and did a documentary on it, which gave me an idea of the system here,” he said.
