Feb 18 2026 to Feb 18 2026 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

62 minutes | English, Hindi & Tamil with English subtitles | 2024 | India

Cinema Pe Cinema: The Theatres. The Movies. And Us. weaves a memory-scape of lives shaped by India’s single-screen cinemas. Through the recollections of people who worked in these theatres and those who loved them, the film traces the intimate, often complex relationships between cinema halls, the movies they screened, and the communities they served. In doing so, it tells the story of India’s small cinemas as a social and cultural history: one deeply entwined with the country’s political and social transformations over the first century of cinema.

The screening will be followed by a discussion between the Director, Vani Subramanian and Usha Rao, Anthropologist & Independent Media Maker. The session will close with an audience Q&A.

Speakers

Vani Subramanian
Filmmaker
One-time advertising writer, Vani Subramanian has been a women’s rights activist and documentary filmmaker since the nineties.

Her work as a filmmaker explores the connections between our everyday practices, perceptions and prejudices, and the larger political questions confronting us. She has worked in many areas, including culture, food practices and production, education, sectarian intolerance, sex selective abortions, and questions relating to justice and the death penalty. Not only have her films been screened nationally and internationally, but they have also won awards on these stages.

Presently she is the Creative Director of reFrame Institute of Art and Expression, an initiative that produces, mentors and disseminates artistic efforts that respond to contemporary challenges.

Usha Rao
Anthropologist & Independent Media Maker
Usha Rao is an anthropologist and independent media maker. Her feature-length documentary Our Metropolis (2014), co-directed with Gautam Sonti, traces the making of Bangalore as a “world-class” city and has been screened at festivals across India and abroad. Her sound installations have been presented at AIWART and other venues. Her doctoral research is a two-sited ethnography of Ulsoor’s Car Festival and the metro, exploring change and upheaval in urban neighbourhoods affected by infrastructure projects.