Off the Beaten Track

A documentary looks at the fading culture of travelling cinemas in Maharashtra

Stills from Like Ants for Sugar.

As a student of media studies, Shirley Abraham was curious to learn about the history of cinema exhibition in India. Her research led her to the rural interiors of Maharashtra to closely look at the travelling cinema culture of the state. “Many films produced in Bollywood are exhibited across big cities. I wanted to see how these films travel from the city to the villages where people want to see them,” says 30-year-old Abraham, who was surprised to find that travelling cinemas existed in such a big way.

After research on the subject with her partner Amit Madhesiya, Abraham has now come up with her debut feature-documentary titled Like Ants for Sugar. Currently in the post-production stages, the film was picked up by the Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab in June, along with nine other independent and upcoming film projects from across the world, “to focus on story editing, character development and structure of the films”.

It has also received a grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund, which supports upcoming projects. Apart from the Sundance Lab, the film has also been getting noticed at various pitching venues such as Sunny Side of the Doc festival, La Rochelle, France 2013, Docedge Kolkata, 2013 and MeetMarket, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013.

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The duo’s film is centred around four characters who are part of travelling cinema companies that tour villages across Maharashtra. It looks at the struggles of these individuals as they are trying to keep afloat their profession despite financial hurdles. “When we started working on the project in 2012, there were about 50 travelling cinema companies. Now that number has reduced significantly,” says Abraham, who followed these characters through two cinema seasons (between November-March).

The film is a touching take on how touring cinemas are surviving due to these showmen. For this project, the makers travelled through parts of Maharashtra such as Vidarbha, Marathwada and Sattara. “Once we found that there is little academic documentation on the culture of travelling cinema, our focus shifted to the human aspect of these cinemas. And that is where the film took shape. We discovered profound stories about the showmen behind the travelling cinema,” adds Abraham, who earlier assisted documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan on Jai Bhim Comrade, besides researching as a writer for foreign documentary projects.

A graduate in journalism from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi, Abraham is also editing Like Ants for Sugar. The title, she says, was inspired by the thought that “passion for cinema is so universal that it is like ants running towards sugar”. For now, Abraham is aiming to ready the film for distribution by the end of this year.

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