Point, shoot curate

Who says you need to be Mr Moneybags to make a film? As Cinema Satsang, the film festival at the Alliance Francaise proves, home and family videos have as much right to reel as Rajnikanth's megabucks movies. And curating a film festival is as much an art as making a movie itself

Love film? Then your options aren't limited to just those in front of and behind the camera. Working with the camera to curate a festival based on a theme is also an art. At least that's what Prabodh Parikh, Director, and Khaliq Parkar, Research Associate, Katha Centre for Film Studies believe.

"At one level, Cinema Satsang will bring together varied audiences who wish to enjoy cinema. On the other, we want to make sure young students get interested in the art of curation and ensure that film festivals are kept alive and well thought out. We want to promote film viewership and scholarship for the layman and scholars, for cine artists and students," says Parikh.

A still from I for India By Sandhya Suri that's going to be screened at
Cinema Satsang. Yash and Sheel Suri leave India for a temporary stay
in England while he burnishes his resum ufffd as a doctor. He buys projectors,
tape recorders, and movie cameras, and sends one set to India beginning
a 40-year exchange of tapes and Super 8 movies between his family in
India and his household near Manchester. We watch their three daughters
grow and we hear increasingly plaintive calls from Yash's parents to
return home. In 1982, it's back to India where Yash sets up a practice.
A return to England, one daughter's marriage, another's move to Australia,
and the third's film project complete the 40-year story.

Spread over five days, Cinema Satsang that begins on Monday, will showcase films curated by six young curators under a theme of their choice. "They were among 15 persons specially trained by us at a workshop in association with the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in 2010. All participants presented proposals which were then shortlisted down to six. So, essentially, they are young curators at work."

On each of the five days, you can watch films that fall under a different themeu00a0-- sports, home and family videos, documentary, low budget and student films, and of course, the evolution of Rajnikanth.

"We have come a long way from film being only for those with financial resources. With digital technology, we find low budget films making a mark as wellu00a0-- Malcolm Pope's Day deals with what he calls the 'democratisation of film through New Economics'," says Parikh.

"There is no 'traditional definition' one can attribute to film because of the dramatic change in form and content as seen in mainstream cinema too. Home and family videos are moving out from the private into the public world. Bollywood films have made this transition too," says Parkar.

What exactly does curating a film festival entail? Problems range from copyright issues to bureaucratic hassles in accessing films. You have to strike a note with the audience while ensuring that your ideas are communicated in the context of what is being screened.

"We pushed our curators to watch at least 300 hours of film before finalising the eight hours chosen. We made sure we had a cinematographer on board (Mukul Kishore) so that basic technical issues of screening and being faithful to the form were taken care of. There is a certain technique to screening as there is to making a film," says Parikh, talking about how everything from the venue for a screening to the ideological/political theme you want to convey makes a difference.

At: Alliance Francaise de Bombay, 40, New Marine Lines, Theosophy Hall.
From: February 21 to 25, 10 am onwards
Log on to: www.bombay.afindia.org for schedule and details.
Email: sheryn@afindia.org for queries.
No entry fee. Seating is on a first-come-first-serve basis. Every curator will be engaging with the audience after the film screening.