Past cinema studios recreated at IFFI

Panaji, Nov 25: The first moving pictures were shown at Watson's hotel in Mumbai in 1896 by Lumiere brothers, reads a poster.

A bomb spotting camera, a property of the US Army Air Corps, the Eymo cameras used towards the last years of the era of silen movies in the 1920s and much more on the history of cinema were being unfolded at an exhibition which attracted a steady stream of film lovers alongside the venues screening world class movies at the International Film Festival of India(IFFI) here.

The exhibition was inaugurated by Minister of Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs, P R Dasmunsi yesterday.

'Dreaming Movies' an exclusive documentary on the history of post-independence Indian cinema directed by Sanit Narvekar was released on the occasion.

The expo was the first of its kind at IFFI, giving a description of each of the exhibit and its brief history.

The exhibition titled 'Behind the Frames' has been put up by the Films Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to recapture the technical history of filmmaking.

It takes one into the quaint old world of pre-independence cinema studios. On display were cameras as old as those used in the 1920s like Mitchell, Arricord, Eymo and the latest ones.

Old and new recording and editing equipments, lights, lenses, rare photographs and other paraphernalia recreated the magic of cinema and gave insight into the hard effort that film makers of yester years had to put in for their creations.

Apart from these, props and rare photographs collected from different sources were also being exhibited. The rare equipments on display gave an insight into the technical nuances of film making, over the times.

Films related to history of Indian cinema, film making and akin subjects would also be screened at the Exhibition venue.

These precious preserves of Films Division were set up at the behest of the Pt Jawaharalal Nehru.

''The need of an official visual media was badly felt when it was found that there was none to film the historic event of the August 14 midnight of 1947. When the country made a tryst with destiny,'' Chief Producer of the Films Division Kuldeep Sinha told UNI