Rolling on change

Working at the institute for 31 years,Yadav has gone from being called a film operator to the more-dignified designation of a “projectionist”. “When I took over from my father,who was a projectionist under P K Nair,we would be constantly on our feet inside this room. Changing reels,threading,manually fixing lens and mass plate,adjusting focus,winding the reel etc. Now,it’s become a luxurious job. I have to only load the reel and thread it. All other settings have been digitalised,” says Yadav,adding that he’s most likely among the last few projectionists.

Sitting on the cusp of change,Yadav and his contemporaries P A Salaam,Deepak Haribhau Kakade,Sayed Abdul Rashid and Mahesh Mandavakar are practical in their approach. “Things have to change with time. There is no way but to accept it,” they echo.

Salaam,assistant projectionist at National Film Archives of India (NFAI),started at a welder’s shop and went many places in between before finally entering NFAI in 1974 as a film checker. The story changed in 1979 when he accompanied then-director Nair to Kerala for a film appreciation course. “It was a 10-day course and after the first day or so,the projectionist did not turn up. Legendary filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan needed clips to be shown for a class he was taking. He came to me and asked me to handle the projector. I was caught off gear,but he showed me what to do. He became my guru,” says 56-year-old Salaam,who has screened and seen so many movies he doesn’t remember the stories. He shares that he used to bunk classes in school to watch films. “My cousins joke that I have landed a custom-made job,” says the satisfied .

A film operator in Alankar Cinema,Rashid also knows something about landing a perfect job. “My classmate’s father owned Nishant Talkies and he would sometimes take me to the projection room. I was smitten,” says Rashid,about how he got fixated with projectors. While working in Southern Command,he learnt everything there was to know about projecting and then worked evenings at various talkies,finally choosing it as his full time profession,about 10 years ago. “There used to be a time when we could not do without six operators at one go. Now we are only three here at Alankar,” he says,showing around the old winding machine,and two Bauer 11 projectors in the room – relics of another world,another scene.