Dear Cinema,
2013- 2024
Sometimes I think about how cinema suspended me and my family from reality. My family would have been very different if my grandfather had not left his hometown with dreams of becoming an actor. He was fascinated by the image of an actor that he saw on screen.When I was about 14 years old, I took off from school and pedalled my bicycle to an abandoned hotel near the beach. I had heard from a friend that my favourite actor’s movie was being filmed there. At first, the line of vehicles and huge lights scared me but I joined the crowd to watch the actor repeat his stunts for a fight sequence over and over again. The whole place was silent except for the sounds made by the stunt actors. I was only there for a photo with the actor but more importantly I wanted to see him in person. I’ve seen his image on the big screen but what is he like in real? I can recall how exhilarated I felt when he glanced at me for just a second.
Was it the same feeling that made my grandfather leave his town to become an actor? Was it the same feeling people had when they visited my house to take a photograph with my grandfather who had by then become famous? Was it the same feeling that made my father struggle all his youth, only to make a fleeting appearance in a film? What creates this allure towards cinema?
When one begins to look for answers to a recurring dream passed on from father to son, one finds oneself on the threshold of dreaming and waking. And when that line of separation becomes visible, even a little, the bigger picture comes into focus.
Cinema gave my family a time under the spotlight but the life we constructed around it crumbled after the death of my grandfather. It was my father who lead me into the world of cinema and while he too dreamt of becoming an actor, his dream was star crossed. He struggled all his youth, only to make a fleeting appearance in a film. While we shared a close bond during my childhood, at some point in time, I began to drift away from him. There exists generational trauma within the family, and I am looking for ways to overcome it.
“Dear Cinema,” is a work that began almost 10 years ago, in 2013 when I started photographing single-screen cinema halls across Tamil Nadu. To confront the distance between me and my father, I began to spend more time with him, talking about cinema and photographing his daily life. This process led me and helped me to understand myself and my father through cinema and its many worlds that we knowingly wrap ourselves into.
The more I visited the cinema halls, the more I realised what cinema gave and what it took.
Words about Dear Cinema, by Gomma (Laura Estelle Barmwoldt)
A patriarch is to lead his family, by following his dream, he shall bring prosperity to his home. These dreams don’t always work in our favours though – and to admit defeat is one of men’s hardest challenges. This work shows how a family’s path unfolds because - or in spite of the aspirations of their leader. How the world of cinema shapes their stories and self-perception, their longings, and aspirations. A family is shaped by their father’s self- understanding, by a nostalgic conservation of old days of glory, passed down to their sons. It shapes all of them, over time, subconsciously. How does my father shape me and how did his father shape him? Can I break the cycle or lead us to the light, can we have a common dream? This work shows the paths that were taken to reach a common goal and how the grandson of a cineaste, becoming a photographer is able to encapsulate, ever-lovingly this story of a family’s strives onto images, that when we look upon them unfold a movie in our minds.
In 1954 my grandfather K Kannan ran away from his hometown and arrived in Madras (now Chennai) with dreams of becoming an actor. The name Kannan, in fact, was his screen name, given to him by actor and former chief minister of Tamil Nadu MGR. My grandfather’s journey in cinema and later in politics brought my family a time under the spotlight that began dimming after his death.
As the son of a popular actor in the 1960s, my father too aspired to become an actor. He spent days of his youth walking from one production studio to another, talking to producers, and keeping in touch with actors from his father’s time, all of it in the hope that he’d get a call to act one day. Neglecting our family, he lived under the strong hope of making it like his father. Now in his sixties, he spends most of his days watching old films from the 1950s and 1960s, and most of his conversations with me center around the cinema and politics of Tamil Nadu
What if my father’s dream had come true? What if he had become an actor? My own experiences of working in the film industry has helped me to understand the emotional upheavals wrought by it. I create “look test” for people who desire to act in cinema. “Look tests” are themselves a form of forgery, photographs in which an actor's face is superimposed on existing images to see if they fit a particular role. As a means to explore my father’s dream of being an actor, I faked "look tests" using archival stills and photos of a young Maheshwar. I bought archival material that covered the popular genres from my father's era, such as Hindu devotional films and action-romance thrillers. The result is a modicum of “what could have been”.
When I began my work, I started by photographing single-screen cinema halls across Tamil Nadu. Initially, the decline of old cinema halls and my memories associated with it urged me to preserve them in ways I could. Now I look at these halls with the same fondness as one would look at an aging person. These single screen cinema halls had their peak, filled with hundreds of fans, and watching a film inside a theater was nothing short of a sacred experience. Does cinema always take back all that it gives?
When I was about 14 years old, I took off from school and pedalled my bicycle to an abandoned hotel near the beach. I had heard from a friend that my favourite actor’s movie was being filmed there. At first, the line of vehicles and huge lights scared me but I joined the crowd to watch the actor repeat his stunts for a fight sequence over and over again. The whole place was silent except for the sounds made by the stunt actors. I was only there for a photo with the actor but more importantly I wanted to see him in person. I’ve seen his image on the big screen but what is he like in real? I can recall how exhilarated I felt when he glanced at me for just a second. Was it the same feeling that made my grandfather leave his town to become an actor? Was it the same feeling people had when they visited my house to take a photograph with my grandfather who had by then become famous? Was it the same feeling that made my father struggle all his youth, only to make a fleeting appearance in a film? What creates this allure towards cinema? How far is one prepared to go based on the idea of an Image?
When it comes to cinema, I often find myself suspended upon a liminal space. I have tried being a part of it, and when I do, I am engulfed by the fear of being devoured by it.
When I was working in cinema, many people would come in and submit their headshots, to find an opportunity to act in any movie. Most of it would be thrown away, or would be stored somewhere, forgotten. I remember that my father too would submit such photos to production houses, back in his day.