BENGALURU: Cinema is more than just storytelling. It can be a whole different science and as a film enthusiast, Abhinav Kandarp says there is a way of watching them too. Pune-based Kandarp, who runs a film education community called Breakfast at Cinema, is coming up with a workshop in the city about parallel cinema and India’s new wave movies. “We teach people how to make or watch movies,” says Kandarp.
The workshop will be tracking new-age Indian cinema, its aesthetics, the way it originated, the contributing factors, its evolution, themes and topics, the technical details and the final product. “1969 marked the beginning of the Indian new-age cinema. But the parallel cinema movement dates back to the 1920s. So, this is at the core of the workshop, and will be explore the contributing factors – how the entire movement began and whether it was European or Indian influence,” explains Kandarp.
A key aspect that set these films apart from their predecessors was a lack of song and dance sequences – a mainstay of mainstream commercial cinema. “Even if there was one, it was with realistic songs and settings. Even before that, they did away with the fantastical nature of Indian cinema that existed till then. They rooted it in the actual location. Real-life gritty stories from the hinterland was what was depicted,” he points out.
Having always loved the medium of cinema, Kandarp recalls it was Govind Nahlani’s critically-acclaimed movie Droh Kaal that changed his perception of movies. “I was very young and was accidentally smuggled into the theatre to watch that movie. It was not a film right for my age, but it changed my life. I had never watched anything like that before and it had a physical impact on my body. I was ill for a few days because of what I saw on screen. That’s when I realised that this medium has a lot of potential and needs to be utilised,” says Kandarp, adding that Mita Vashisht’s performance in the movie ‘left him shaken’.
(The workshop Unparalleled Parallel Cinema will be held on March 16-17 at Museum of Art & Photography)