IT is the day before Poornima and a near perfect moon hangs over Alangkulam’s cement dust-laden streets. Rajapalayam town nearby has a generous serving of cement factories. The kalam (village square) in front of an Amman (Durga) temple is bustling as men scurry about setting up a screen, a VHS player and a projector to create a makeshift theatre. In this remote hamlet, about 614 km south of Chennai, which has never seen tar roads and where even toddlers are drunk on MGR and Rajnikanth ‘masalas’, Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed Pather Panchali is an anomaly. Children, most of them ardent Rajni fans, snigger at the film’s title. ‘‘The film is about how ‘Panchali’ was tortured,’’ mocks one. Another pipes in rudely, ‘‘No, no, it is a film about a great battle.’’ At this point, organiser C Selvam, 31, breaks in to narrate a synopsis of the Merku Vangala (West Bengal) film. To make things more difficult, the almost two-hour film has only English subtitles. The children, by now resentful, are restless. But as the film begins, they are forced to remain still. As it progresses, they are captivated by Apu’s antics. Halfway through the journey, the children are transfixed by Pather Panchali. ‘‘This always happens,’’ says Selvam. ‘‘Initially, they are hostile. Then they’re hooked.’’ The result is that more than 50,000 villagers in 20 hamlets in the area have caught as many cinematic classics as the average film critic. Whether it’s Tian Ming Wu’s King of Masks (Chinese), Ebrahim Foruzesh’s The Key (Iranian), Aparna Sen’s Yugant, Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudali, Sumitra Bhave’s Doghi, Bicycle Thieves, Okka Ooru Katha (Telegu) or even the screen version of Maxim Gorky’s Mother (Russian), a screening attracts at least 300 people and is always a huge hit. At the end of every session, a mic gets passed around and the audience dissects the film. Chinnathayee, with heavy gold earrings dangling from the gaping holes in her lobes; Karuppan, with his tobacco-reddened teeth and 13-year-old Rajni (named after Rajnikanth), who works at a cement factory, are all active participants. Selvam, a cattle breeder who began this movement with a desire to introduce good cinema to villagers, is more committed to the art than most film institutions. The Kongankulam native, a school dropout himself, caught his first Ray film at 23. ‘‘I cannot describe what I felt. I was determined to share the feeling.’’ Since then, Selvam has not missed a single film festival in the country. By now, he knows every frame of Pather Panchali by heart. His friends call him Tarkovsky after Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky. ‘‘I couldn’t stop talking about the great man after I first saw Sacrifice,’’ says Selvam. On one of his jaunts, Selvam met director B Lenin (2002 National Award winner), who started Asaiyum Nirarpada Iyakkam (A Film Journey), a film appreciation campaign. The bond between the film sophisticate and the village bumpkin grew, and in February 2003, Kunang Kunang Kurr was born. ‘‘It is a popular village game. You whisper into someone’s ears and then scream to shake him up. That’s what we are trying to do in villages—awaken villagers to meaningful cinema, particularly children,’’ says Selvam. When he was starting out, he cycled from one village to another, with a bag containing a projector, VHS/DVD player and other paraphernalia slung over one shoulder and the 12 ft by 10 ft screen roll balanced on the other. Soon after, village panchayat heads sponsored a vehicle for Selvam. Now he works with a group of associates, including a tailor with a penchant for writing short stories and poetry, a former bank employee and a homeopath. The motley group travels the length and breadth of Virudhunagar district, luring villagers to sample their fare and ushering in a quiet revolution. Selvam has steadily accumulated a collection of his own films. ‘‘We now have shows in colleges and schools. The students enjoy the sessions,’’ Selvam says proudly. This year, Selvam took the 50th anniversary celebrations of Ray very seriously. He held several screenings of four of Ray’s children’s films—Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress), Joi Baba Felunath (The Elephant God), Hirak Rajar Dese (The Kingdom of Diamonds) and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha)—in villages. A building (purchased and renovated with Selvam’s savings) will soon come up in Rajapalayam town close to his village, which will be the new resource centre for Kunang Kunang Kurr. Selvam also plans to start a library, which will stock books on films, VCDs and DVDs of world cinema, and different forms of theatre, folk art and puppetry. Children will be able to spend time there and express their creativity in whatever form they like. Selvam also cherishes a special dream, which will soon be fulfilled. He wants to screen 10 films from the world cinema category (with Tamil subtitles) every year to sixth graders. According to his calculation, by the time the students hit Class XII, they would have seen about 70 good films. ‘‘Their thinking would have changed because I showed them a new world,’’ Selvam says. Look what one good film did to him.
