It's a Friday afternoon, and there's a small crowd milling outside Everest Talkies near Bangalore's East railway station, waiting to buy tickets for Ragini MMS 2, the Sunny Leone-starrer that has just released. The oldest single-screen theatre in Bangalore, part of a vanishing breed, would appear to be like any other of its ilk. Unless you happen to drop in on the last Thursday of the month, when it screens documentaries for free.
"It's historical, in a way. No single-screen in the country screens documentaries regularly," says filmmaker Sushma Veerappa, one of the organisers of the screenings, which began this January with Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang. Everest became the answer to the prayer of Veerappa and a few other filmmakers who were looking for a space to screen documentaries.
These screenings are the return of a movement that started two years after the Gujarat riots. A lot of documentaries had been made around the events, and filmmakers were looking forward to screening their work at the Mumbai International Film Festival. Then came the bolt from the blue: a government directive that all documentaries at the festival would need a Censor Board certificate, something unheard of previously. Filmmakers were up in arms, and held a parallel festival where the films of all those protesting were screened. The protest gave birth to Vikalp, a loosely-held group of like-minded filmmakers across the country. Veerappa and a few others formed the Bangalore chapter and began screening documentaries regularly to foster the culture of documentary-viewing in the city, something which was lacking before 2004.
But after a few years, the movement began to lose steam, and finally stopped altogether when two of their regular venues were closed down for various reasons. It was revived last year when a couple of other filmmakers joined Vikalp Bengaluru and talks began about how the screenings could begin again. "I knew about Vikalp during my college years in Delhi, when I used to go for screenings, and I missed that group when I moved to Bangalore," says Sandhya Kumar, one of the documentary filmmakers who joined recently and was instrumental to the revival.
The pieces fell into place when one of the groups walked into its neighbourhood cinema, Everest Talkies, and asked if the management might be interested in screening documentaries. The owner happened to be 26-year-old Yogi Kshatriya, a graduate in Fine Arts from University of London, who was looking to expand the scope of Everest, and make it into a cultural hub. "The initial idea was to have a week-long documentary festival but then we decided to have a screening a month," he says.
Kshatriya is the third-generation owner of the British Raj-era cinema, the construction of which began in 1932. His grandfather rented it from the architect and owner, Chowriappa, when the family moved to Bangalore from Karachi after Partition, and his father began running it in the late '80s, when it was overburdened with debt, having bought it from Chowriappa's heirs. It was renovated in 2008, and the revamped cinema opened in 2009. Kshatriya, who had been spending a year learning kung-fu from Shaolin monks in a monastery in Qu Fu, took over the management of the cinema in 2012, when his father passed away.
Everest, he says, is a landmark because of its history, making him reluctant to allow it to go the way of other single-screens. "Commercially, it would be more viable to pull it down but I don't want to," he says. He had been considering screening old classics or having stand-up comedy nights, when Vikalp approached him with their idea.
The response to their first screening was overwhelming, with over 400 people turning up to watch Gulabi Gang, the documentary about Bundelkhand's pink sari-clad vigilante brigade. Even more encouraging, says Kshatriya, was that over 100 people stayed back after the film for a discussion with the filmmaker, who was present. The next film, Rangabhoomi, about Dadasaheb Phalke, had a turnout of around 120, which Veerappa says is not too bad for a documentary. Next week, Vikalp Bengaluru will be screening Char...The No-Man's Island, a multiple-award winning documentary about a 14-year-old boy who smuggles rice for a living, and lives on Char, the fragile island he has made his home on, which may be swallowed by the monsoon.
For now, the screenings are free, though members of the audience are welcome to make a donation at the end to sustain the initiative. "Ultimately, all of us would love to have ticketed screenings but that's a long way off," says Veerappa. Still, the mere fact that a mainstream venue in the city is now screening documentaries regularly is inspiration enough.
"It's historical, in a way. No single-screen in the country screens documentaries regularly," says filmmaker Sushma Veerappa, one of the organisers of the screenings, which began this January with Nishtha Jain's Gulabi Gang. Everest became the answer to the prayer of Veerappa and a few other filmmakers who were looking for a space to screen documentaries.
These screenings are the return of a movement that started two years after the Gujarat riots. A lot of documentaries had been made around the events, and filmmakers were looking forward to screening their work at the Mumbai International Film Festival. Then came the bolt from the blue: a government directive that all documentaries at the festival would need a Censor Board certificate, something unheard of previously. Filmmakers were up in arms, and held a parallel festival where the films of all those protesting were screened. The protest gave birth to Vikalp, a loosely-held group of like-minded filmmakers across the country. Veerappa and a few others formed the Bangalore chapter and began screening documentaries regularly to foster the culture of documentary-viewing in the city, something which was lacking before 2004.
But after a few years, the movement began to lose steam, and finally stopped altogether when two of their regular venues were closed down for various reasons. It was revived last year when a couple of other filmmakers joined Vikalp Bengaluru and talks began about how the screenings could begin again. "I knew about Vikalp during my college years in Delhi, when I used to go for screenings, and I missed that group when I moved to Bangalore," says Sandhya Kumar, one of the documentary filmmakers who joined recently and was instrumental to the revival.
The pieces fell into place when one of the groups walked into its neighbourhood cinema, Everest Talkies, and asked if the management might be interested in screening documentaries. The owner happened to be 26-year-old Yogi Kshatriya, a graduate in Fine Arts from University of London, who was looking to expand the scope of Everest, and make it into a cultural hub. "The initial idea was to have a week-long documentary festival but then we decided to have a screening a month," he says.
Kshatriya is the third-generation owner of the British Raj-era cinema, the construction of which began in 1932. His grandfather rented it from the architect and owner, Chowriappa, when the family moved to Bangalore from Karachi after Partition, and his father began running it in the late '80s, when it was overburdened with debt, having bought it from Chowriappa's heirs. It was renovated in 2008, and the revamped cinema opened in 2009. Kshatriya, who had been spending a year learning kung-fu from Shaolin monks in a monastery in Qu Fu, took over the management of the cinema in 2012, when his father passed away.
Everest, he says, is a landmark because of its history, making him reluctant to allow it to go the way of other single-screens. "Commercially, it would be more viable to pull it down but I don't want to," he says. He had been considering screening old classics or having stand-up comedy nights, when Vikalp approached him with their idea.
The response to their first screening was overwhelming, with over 400 people turning up to watch Gulabi Gang, the documentary about Bundelkhand's pink sari-clad vigilante brigade. Even more encouraging, says Kshatriya, was that over 100 people stayed back after the film for a discussion with the filmmaker, who was present. The next film, Rangabhoomi, about Dadasaheb Phalke, had a turnout of around 120, which Veerappa says is not too bad for a documentary. Next week, Vikalp Bengaluru will be screening Char...The No-Man's Island, a multiple-award winning documentary about a 14-year-old boy who smuggles rice for a living, and lives on Char, the fragile island he has made his home on, which may be swallowed by the monsoon.
For now, the screenings are free, though members of the audience are welcome to make a donation at the end to sustain the initiative. "Ultimately, all of us would love to have ticketed screenings but that's a long way off," says Veerappa. Still, the mere fact that a mainstream venue in the city is now screening documentaries regularly is inspiration enough.
Char will be screened on March 27 at 7 pm at Everest Talkies, MM Road, Bangalore