Cinema on the Streets

(An AP article, published in The Hindu, but not available on its website)
Kolkata - Just about every night, when the workday ends and this crowded, crumbling city comes alive with evening shoppers, two boys push a battered metal cart through the streets, looking for a place to set up their century-old machine.

And every night, when they start turning the crank, the children come.

Because hidden inside the cart is a tiny movie screen, no more than 25cm high, where a 19th-century projector throws up haphazard clips from Indian musicals.

 Muhammed Salim at work on his bioscope in Kolkata - AP

The scenes are blurry, the sound quality worse, and the plot, if that's the right word, is nothing but random slices of random musicals.

But in a neighbourhood where poverty is the norm and most homes are moulding concrete shacks, the Salim family's mobile movie theatre - technically, it's called a bioscope, though they simply call it "the machine" - can bring 10 minutes of joy for a few cents. Even around here, it's affordable.

"Once I put on the music, the children come and they have to watch," said Muhammed Salim (50) a greying potbellied man whose father began showing movies on Kolkata's pavements decades ago, and whose adolescent sons now work the machine most nights. "It doesn't really matter what's on."

The audience, most of them 8- to 10-year-olds, agree.

They could see much of the same on television, but that would miss the point: the bioscope is a novelty; it's watching gears rattle; it's the freedom of spending a little - and around here only a little - money.

"I love this thing," said Zeeshan Farouq, who spends nearly an hour a night at the bioscope.

In action, it's a bizarre sight, a clattering, shrieking crate that seems to be spilling children from its sides.

About 150cm long, it has a hand-cranked projector, marked 1898, that beams images into a rectangular metal box.

Up to a dozen children can crouch along the sides, watching through a slot. A blanket hangs over their heads, blocking out stray light, and a cheap speaker plays soundtracks at screechingly high volumes. Half a rupee brings 10 minutes of screen time.

Salim's movies are cobbled together from movies shown over the past decade. Fishing through bins at film recyclers, he simply searches for dance scenes and splices them into one film.

"The kids don't care (about quality), as long as people are moving on the screen," he said.

For three generations, the Salims have brought movies to the streets of Kolkata (the new name for Calcutta), beginning long before World War 2, when India was a British colony and thousands of bioscopes played silent black-and-white films.

These days, Salim's movies reflect a dramatically changed movie world, complete with buxom actresses, luxuriously swaying hips and plenty of scenes of clinging wet saris.

"It has been 70 or 80 years we've been showing movies," said Salim, whose father depended on the bioscope for his entire income.

These days, Salim says, there are just two bioscopes in Kolkata, a city of 10-million people. A handful of others are thought to be scattered across India.

The owner of a small tea stand, Salim runs his machine to earn a little extra money - he makes about 100 rupees (R14) on a decent movie night - and, in no small part, out of nostalgia.

"It reminds me of my childhood," said Salim.

His children are less romantic. "When I grow up I'll do this," said 12-year-old Jasin, who hopes to become an embroiderer. "If there's no work, I'll have to do it."

Salim is, by his own admission, a fairly simple man. His tattered button-down shirt is stained. His needs are few. His children are barely educated.

His love of the bioscope reflects a nation obsessed with movies.

Bollywood, the Mumbai-based movie world, cranks out more than 800 films a year, making it the most prolific film industry in the world.

Most are musicals that follow a strict boy-meets-then-loses-then-gets-girl formula. Unhappy endings are rare. Actors suddenly burst into elaborate song-and-dance numbers.

Urban cinemas are often packed, and across rural India, movies are shown on portable screens trucked to small towns and powered by generators. AP

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