Film societies and Us

The film society movement in India has a glorious history, but it had gone into a slumber for quite some time before the DVD revolution happened, making it possible for film societies in far-flung areas to get films for screenings easily. It is the film society movement through which many cine lovers got their first taste of cinema from other languages.

I know for myself. It was in 1993 that I first got to watch a Mani Rathnam film – Roja, the original Tamil version and not the dubbed Hindi version that became a rage a few months later – at a festival of films in various Indian languages (I think the Indian Panorama package) organized by the Assam Cine Art Society in Guwahati. In those days when DVDs had not yet invented, and video cassettes at the local library only gave access to Hindi and English films, such festivals …


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