Committed to good cinema
The film society movement that turns 50 this year has produced several new-gen filmmakers like K.R. Manoj and Sudevan
By : cris
Update: 2015-07-21 02:17 GMT
KR Manoj grew up in a village, 15 kilometres off Nedumangad, reading about ‘another kind of cinema’ that didn’t come to the theatres there. In 1989, when he joined a college in Thiruvananthapuram, he went in search of this other kind of cinema, and found them in film societies, in the halls of Russian Cultural Centre where screenings happened every week.
Half of his education took place outside the college in meetings of film societies that he became a member of. He saw the one-year-old Film Utsav — take shape in the newly formed Kairali Sree Theatre complex. Somewhere along the line, his love for the movement turned into the making of films and documentaries of this other kind. On July 10, when his first feature film — Kanyaka Talkies — released, Manoj owed a lot to the film society movement, which itself turns 50 this year.
“There are a few young filmmakers like K.R. Manoj who came out of the film society movement — like Sanalkumar Sasidharan and Sudevan,” says V.K. Joseph, secretary, Federation of Film Societies of India — Keralam. ‘Keralam’ is the only state to get an independent unit, unlike the other places where it is clubbed into regions. Because the history of the movement in Kerala goes way back, bringing to curious young minds, films from around the world. But now, days before they celebrate 50 years, what, you ask, is the relevance of film societies, at a time when any movie is available to anyone with a computer and internet connection. “Film viewing is a group thing, where you communicate, where discussions happen, where ideas form,” V.K. Joseph says.
It is more a political role now, says Madhu Janardanan, founder member of the Montage Movie Club in Manjeri. “To understand world issues through cinema and take a stand. Like the Palestine issue, what is the reality there? You view it from an artist’s perspective, not a politician’s.” The movement also produced the ‘real’ new generation of filmmakers, according to Madhu, people like K.R. Manoj and Sudevan.
Sajin Baabu, another name in the new-gen list, had started seeing independent films much later, and like his predecessors, got inspired to make films. “There’s no doubt about the big role film societies have played. But the language of films has changed so much and yet, the film society screenings happen in small venues with two speakers, there has been little technological update.”
But then the movement has picked up in the last few years. “It had a decline in the 80s when television took over. And in the last few years going digital has made possible easy screening. With the digital excess, what a viewer needs is to find a contextualisation, put your viewing into context,” says C.S. Venkiteswaran, film critic and one of the active members of the film society movement. “But what are film societies doing now to help parallel filmmakers? Earlier they used to do more than screen films, they’d write about them, give them a space.”
That’s one of the things K.R. Manoj did, edit a publication for film and culture studies. It was the time the first International Film Festival of Kerala was happening in Kozhikode. And the International Video Festival organised by C-DIT in Thiruvananthapuram. “The IV fest featured short films and documentaries that led to the formation of SIGNS which in turn led to the IDSFFK.”
It is the film society movement that had led to the many film festivals that took shape in the 1990s. In 2010, the first edition of the female film festival took place in Thiruvanathapuram. It brought films that addressed the problems faced by women across the world.
Their contributions have been many and in 50 years, more than 100 film societies in Kerala have gone through stages of decline and revival. Memories will become conversations when the pioneers of the movement come together, on July 26, in Thiruvananthapuram, and celebrate its 50th birthday.