Only film, no club?

What’s the purpose of a film society? Is it only to screen films that we may not watch very often, or more than that? Last Thursday, after the screening of Romanian film — 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days — at Santiniketan during the week-long film festival, three of us were discussing what purpose the film had served for Bikshan’s 300-odd members.

Bikshan is an eight-year-old film society started in early 2001 by a few young and veteran ashramites and local residents of Bolpur-Santiniketan. For all these years it has enjoyed good patronage from all sections of people — from octogenarians to students alike. Organising seminars, tete-a-tete with directors, workshops for students and certainly screening good films — it has done a lot to reach out to people of a popular Bengali cultural hub which did witness failed beginnings of film clubs in the past.

What it could not do on a regular basis is conducting interactive “adda” sessions before or after screening a film. This, i feel, is essential for Bikshan or any other cine clubs to make people aware of the film society movement. There are two different ways of approaching this movement. One, just screening quality films for an audience who could not see such movies in their lifetime, but there is another purpose too. This is more of a constructive manner of approaching a film; this carry technical and intellectual overtones. A film like Modern Times of Chaplin could be a kid’s movie, and it could be on the syllabus of a university to show how alienated workers could be during industrial revolution. In fact, i was told by a reporter friend that prior to the Bengal Assembly elections of 2006, Chaplin films were often screened by Maoists in rural areas untouched by development. For the Naxalites, the same films would have served a different purpose that we can’t even think of.

Back to film society movement. I am not saying that all film clubs should take the Drishya route. Drishya, a four-year-old organisation, has trodden a road hardly taken by any one of us. The youngsters of the Calcutta organisation has till date screened films — most in DVD formats — in thousands of villages and small towns in India. Their effort, i would say, is a revolution in the film society movement. They used to talk about the film before screenings, as common people might not make out every detail of an Eisenstein montage or a Ray angle. But after the introduction, screening of the film and subsequent short interactive session, the so-called aam admi would leave the venue with a different set of mind. Why can’t Bikshan initiate such efforts? It can also produce a monthly film bulletin which would include discussions on films — classics and new releases across the world — not just announcing future screenings, as it’s done at present through an irregular newsletter.