...it is a very warm and human film. i wish it was longer, something i rarely feel after seeing most films.

- Anand Patwardhan

India's most distinguished and internationally acclaimed

documentary filmmaker


Rau's energy and commitment to his art really came through in the interviews. A touching story, and he a pillar of courage and true grit, as we say around here.

- Joanna Kirkpatrick, PhD

Cultural and Social Anthropologist
New World Film Reivew Editor
Visual Anthropology

It is a charming work, likely to leave those familiar with the bioscopewallah from their childhood in India and South Asia (and, perhaps, beyond) nostalgic about a dream-making machine of their past........we should recognize the bioscopewallah as a folk artist, as one committed to his art and the practices of story-telling, and not as a mere purveyor of entertainment.

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- Vinay Lal, Associate Professor

UCLA Department of History

Chair of South Asia Interdepartmental Program


...a delightful and original treatment of a fascinating subject, of interest  both in terms of cinema history and social history. It provides us with a record of an era in the purveyance of moving images, the audiences who relied on this mode, and the remarkable entertainers who laboured to bring them to the villagers who welcomed them. Your movie provides us with a sensitive and moving testament to the role of the bioscopewallah.

- Roy Merrens
Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar
York University - Toronto
Canada

...insightful and touching: a great achievement.

- Christopher Pinney

Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture

University College London

UK


This charming story links past and present as it brings together film history and folk performance, revealing how an otherwise obsolete piece of film equipment likely to be found only in museums is part of a lived culture form in India. However as filmmaker Kadam notes it is a vanishing form, with fewer bioscopewallahs after television has gained wide popularity with village audiences and the urban poor. The film is also an important instance of traveling culture residing in the mobility of the bioscopewallah himself as folk artist as well as in the mobility of images, characteristic of early cinema with itinerant exhibitors who were also performers.

- Lakshmi Srinivas

Lecturer of Sociology

Wellesley College

USA