Single screen theatres in West Bengal have come down from 700 to 250 today. The monopolistic control over distribution and exhibition makes the release of most films next to impossible. In fact, it is much easier to produce, finance and direct a film, to find actors and technical crew to make the film possible, to find out locations and get help of local people to put a film together. But releasing the film in a theatre and getting it to run beyond one week is really not possible. 

So, Bengali cinema considered not from big banners is forced to leave the exhibition field even when the film is reasonably much better than the average masala film shot abroad with lots of songs, dances, fights and item numbers. “Small” films fall by the wayside, wanting for a single screen theatre to showcase them and get audience response. Three recent “small films” can be cited as examples of this trend. 

The first is Antarleen, a psychological mystery written and directed by Anirban Bhattacharya. The second is Kichhukshan written and directed by Anaghranjan Pashi and the third is the yet-to-be-released 61 Garpar Lane jointly directed by Rajesh Dutta and Ipshita Roy Sarkar. The first two films have been released already but while one did well in a couple of theatres, Kichhukshan did not even have a proper release and was withdrawn within the week.

Antarleen has been shot on a comparatively low budget even within the budgetary constraints of Bengali cinema. Directed by debutant Anirban Bhattacharya, this film can be a model lesson on how a psychological thriller can express itself eloquently and aesthetically without resorting to any social agenda to curry audience sympathy. In a manner of speaking, it redefines the genre and offers space to look at the genre from a new perspective. Yet, it did not get the run in single screen theatres that could have made the film break even and help the director with his next film. But this did not happen because the director, who sourced the film himself, did not have the funds he needed to market the film and pump enough advertising hype and press do’s to bring the viewers in. So, a major section of the media remained ignorant that this film was running in the theatres at all. Whatever run the film had mainly at Nandan, was due to word-of-mouth publicity by people who had already seen the film and had liked it.

The fate of Kichhukshan is much more tragic. Produced jointly by Kalyan Singha Roy who has also written some of the lyrics and Anaghranjan Pashi, the film had its premiere at Nandan 2 a couple of weeks ago. The media had been invited to the screening and most of them arrived to watch the film. Most of us liked the film enough to have given it three stars out of five if we were permitted to do a review. Sadly, this did not happen because most editors in town were not interested in a review of a film they have never heard of because it had gone from the theatre almost as soon as it was screened. This writer tried to persuade an editor of a wonderful online magazine but one of the editors refused on grounds that he had never heard of such a film.

Kichhukshan, the title, is derived from the name of a home-stay in a small village in Bankura run by Shivnath and his wife Sheuli who is much younger than her husband. They also work at shaping dolls out of the famous red clay of Bankura known across the world for its beautiful creation of the red clay of Bankura. They have a loving son who studies in a college in the city. In the film, they play hosts to a young film director and his cameraman who have arrived in the village to scout the locations for a film they have planned to shoot. Sheuli cooks wonderful Bengali dishes for them while her husband Shivnath plays the perfect host and sometimes, even plays guide while they visit local shops to take a look at the local handicrafts and artefacts. These shots have a rather touristy effect that does not quite jell with the simple narrative of the film but even so, it is treated well by the first-time director. The music comprised of a couple of Tagore numbers and other songs is good and well-positioned too, but at times, appear a bit too loud to fit into the village surroundings. 

Sheuli has a dark past and this is narrated in flashback which changes the mood of the film so much that it brings down the film’s pace and temperament drastically. The flashback is not as bad as the script and the treatment that suddenly turns the film into a commercial compromise. But the director soon turns away from the villainous intrusion and gets back with his camera to the village. It is a beautiful love story, though narrated through a few hiccups that could be forgiven for a young director who expresses his love for cinema so passionately and honestly. The fact that Kicchukshan did not work at all and turned a total cropper at the box office is very sad not only because it turned out to be a disaster for the producer and director but also because it deprived the Bengali movie-goer from a well-intentioned film shot within a shoe-string budget with remarkable performances by the actors except the actor who portrays the role of the young director whose acting is dismal.

61, Garpar Lane is a film that steers clearly away from any copyrighted Southern box office hit and also from any Bengali detective story or murder mystery. The name of the film is traced back to a very old neighbourhood in the northern outskirts of Kolkata. The house, 61, Garpar Lane is located to the south of Maniktala Main Road. It is a house owned by a patriarch Jagadish Ghosh (Soumitra Chatterjee) who lives with his only daughter Jhinuk whose husband Supratik stays and works in Chandannagar. The main focus of the story is in the close bonding the tenants share within themselves and with the landlord, in joys and sorrows, in occasions like weddings and deaths and so on. Their world seems to fall apart when Supratik tries to convince his father-in-law to turn the house over the real estate dealers to demolish the old house and have a spanky multi-storied building in its place. But Jagadish Babu is adamant and the tenants, though they quarrel and make-up constantly, are now bound together threatened by the possibility.

“61, Garpar Lane is a microcosm of a world that once existed in old Calcutta but has now become history as it has all but collapsed in the greed for multi-storied buildings that promises both permanent shelter and money to the original owners, thus demolishing an entire culture of togetherness and solidarity today’s generation will perhaps never know,” says one of the directors Ispshita Roy Sarlar. The film is scheduled to have its theatrical release in February. But how many of us will go to the theatre within the first week to watch it before it surrenders to big banners distributed and exhibited by the powers-that-be? This is a reflection of the death of single screen theatres that once created, sustained and cultivated a culture of its own that is dying slowly.