The Pilgrims of Cinema

（作品情報）
言語：英語
A photoshow presentation, punctuated by sound and text.

Amit Madheshiya
Shirley Abraham

（解説）
Come October, and the lunar calendar heralds the beginning of religious fairs (jatras) in Maharashtra, western India. Devoted pilgrims begin preparing for diverse rituals- among them, a collective ceremonial congregation for the gods of cinema.

For about six decades, the patrons have played host to familiar guests- giant film screens, Bauer projectors, 35 mm film reels, enormous tents, modified trucks and antiquated speakers. Though striking and unmistakable, such epic accoutrements of cinema, have, over the years, forged strong bonds with the rustic milieu of the village as they accompany the jatras which travel to the hamlets each year.

The jatras, which accumulated thousands of potential audiences, were considered the best fits for screening mythological films. The religious fairs provided a physical locale, an enclosure for the tent cinemas commune. Over decades, they have facilitated cinema, a neo cultural experience in becoming an all-inclusive, legitimised and eventually treasured tradition for the patrons.

Since the early 1940s, the swarming audiences have crouched by a beam from a film projector, in the conical darkness of a tent. This annual ritual of cinema has come to acquire mass devotion, mysticism and a sheer scale befitting the iconic status of religion, whose numerous avatars sit in close proximity as the truck talkies roll in.

Each face in the teeming crowd has a distinct association with cinema, enabling an exploration of the crucial relationships forged by the tent talkies. Projections of the self are revealed, intertwined in realms of memory and desire. A heightened sense of awareness creates intervals of communion between individual audiences and their sites of fancy. The fantasies of a patron and enticement of the medium of moving images- a culmination of each journey, resulting in a swarming tent.