Indian film: Bioscopewala

A film about cinema...

.

Addie Quested: Right up there with Cinema Paradiso and Good morning Babilonia. Is the genre Bollywood?

.

Fruit selling to film showing

Anne Sari: Bollywood is often about drama, music, dance, romance. It doesn’t have much of that. But Hindi cinema contains epic references, family stories and stories within stories. So there’s an element of Bollywood.

.

Addie Quested: What prompted the format?

.

Anne Sari: Actually it was the story of Kabuliwala, by Rabindranath Tagore that formed the structure.

.

Addie Quested: A dried-fruit seller from Kabul. An old story,1892.

.

Anne Sari: Yes. We called the girl Mini too, but made put into a modern context. In the 1990s, the bioscopewala, an Afghan itinerant, who showed cinema in the streets, befriended Mini because she reminded him of his daughter. Her father, a photographer, also befriended him. Jump forward twenty years, Mini’s father died on his way to Kabul, the bioscopewala has been in prison and lost his mind, so Mini sets out on a pilgrimage to put the pieces together.

____________

Voice-over

Bioscopewala: a bioscope is a simple cinema, a wala is one who runs a bioscope. Echoes of literature, twists in the plot, the characters struggle and develop. Good one!

...