In Person: Cinema Pe Cinema by Vani Subramanian

With its world premiere at DIFF, Vani Subramanian’s Cinema Pe Cinema: The Theatre. The Movies. And Us (2024) seeks to create “a memoryscape” of the Indian film-watching public. The filmmaker visits various single-screen theatres across the country to look back at their heyday. Speaking to film lovers ranging from theatre-owners to trade analysts to film theorists and film enthusiasts, Subramanian documents the experience of watching the big screen come to life. For, the single-screen experience allowed for a far more democratic possibility—it was affordable to the masses and in front of the magic of the big screen, class, caste and religious distinctions seemed to evaporate. While the rise of the multiplex has diminished this possibility, the fall in popularity of the single-screen has given way to political contestations within the space of the hall. By examining how overtly propagandist hate-filled films are now screened to audiences baying for blood, Cinema Pe Cinema comments on the changing fabric of society and the place popular cinema occupies in our lives.

In this conversation, Subramanian speaks to us about the notion of the cinematic archive as ever evolving, the need to move beyond nostalgia when thinking of filmic histories, the large infrastructure at work to make and distribute movies, some advice for young filmmakers and her experience of screening the film at DIFF.

Vani Subramanian has been a women’s rights activist and documentary filmmaker since the 1990s. Her work as a filmmaker explores the connections between our everyday practices, perceptions and prejudices, and the larger political questions confronting us. Her films have been screened and received awards both nationally and internationally. Over the years, she has extended her practice to video art in performance as well as mixed media installations.

(Featured Image: Still from Cinema Pe Cinema [2024] by Vani Subramanian. Image courtesy of the director)

Recorded on 9 November 2024.

To learn more about DIFF 2024, read Mallika Visvanathan’s interview with the founders Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam and watch the previous episodes of In Person with Udit Khurana as he discusses his film Taak (2024), Jhansy Giting Dokgre Marak on her film Chaware (2023) and Gavati Wad on her film O Seeker (2024).