Cinema Pe Cinema: The Theatres. The Movies. And Us

Directed by Vani Subramanian

For some, India’s single screen cinemas are a legacy to be celebrated and preserved. For others, they remain a place to see movies. Yet others remember that it was within those crumbling edifices that the magic of the movies was first discovered, and deep, lasting connections made. Cinema Pe Cinema meanders through theatres in small towns and big cities across India, creating a memoryscape of women and men whose lives have been touched by single screen cinemas. As they reminisce about film-going and its connections to their lives, the film becomes an act of resistance against forgetting single screen cinema theatres as they shutter down across India. An effort to keep the memories of some films alive through traces of their audio and visual ephemera. A shared cinematic space in which diverse audiences speak of single screen theatre-going experiences that often carry forward into multiplex cinemas in these polarised times.