{"id":899,"date":"2022-12-05T19:25:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T00:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/?p=899"},"modified":"2023-02-07T16:57:19","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T21:57:19","slug":"chhello-show-the-last-film-show-dir-pan-nalin-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/2022\/12\/05\/chhello-show-the-last-film-show-dir-pan-nalin-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Chhello Show (“The Last Film Show”, dir. Pan Nalin, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One day, Samay\u2019s father announces that he is taking his family to the movies. Samay (Bhavin Rabari) is curious about this \u2013 his family has not been to see a movie since he was five years old. \u201cListen,\u201d says his father, \u201conce you\u2019ve seen this one, you\u2019ll never watch another again. I\u2019ve told you many times, cinema is not appropriate for us.\u201d But Samay\u2019s father (Dipen Raval) is willing to make an exception for this film, Karishma Kali Kaa<\/strong>. The film stars Amrita Singh as Parvati, a devotee of Kali, so it\u2019s deemed appropriate viewing for this Brahmin family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samay is more entranced by the light of the projector than he is by the film, but he\u2019s also curious about how the light is transformed into the images he\u2019s seeing on the screen. On the trip home, he tells his father about his friends who want to become a station master and an engineer \u2013 but then he also announces that he wants to make movies. His father advises him to keep quiet: \u201cHave you ever heard of a Brahmin doing such a shameful job?\u201d For the father, the film world is a place in sharp contrast with his own views and values. His sharp son notes that for all his father\u2019s talk about honour, he\u2019s still running a tea stall at a train station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Samay sets off exploring the effect of light and how it is transformative, placing shards of coloured glass in a row on the train tracks. He\u2019s a scavenger, collecting pieces of coloured glass and lamps through which to view the world. He gathers up matchboxes with pictures on them and later uses them to tell colourful stories to his friends. Samay is more curious about the world he views from the window of a train through a green glass bottle than the world he\u2019s being taught about at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day, he snatches a note out of his father\u2019s moneybox, plays hooky from school, and heads to the movie theatre to watch an Akshay Kumar movie, where he is utterly transfixed. He\u2019s late getting home after missing the train, and his frantic parents go to the police, who find him sleeping on a train bench. When he arrives home, his father chases and beats him, followed by his group of friends. At home, his father puts up a poster of \u201cTraits of an Ideal Boy\u201d, which Samay promptly crumples and throws out. For Samay will not be deterred. He next sneaks into the theatre to see Jodhaa Akbar<\/strong>. The light coming from the projection booth is just too much of a temptation for this boy, who is curious how light transforms into moving images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, however, Samay is tossed out of the theatre for not paying for his ticket. He meets the projectionist, Fazal (Bhavesh Shrimali), while he\u2019s eating lunch. Samay tells the projectionist his mother (Richa Meena) is the best cook in the world, but he\u2019s lost his appetite after being thrown out of the movie theatre, so he gives the man his lunch. In this way, a deal is struck: Samay will trade his lunches for access to the projection booth to watch movies. In the projection booth, Samay not only watches films, but he also trades dialogues with the projectionist, he dances to the songs, and he learns how to splice film together and change reels, all the while still entranced by the whirring projector. Eventually, he asks Fazal how films are made. According to Fazal, films are all about stories. \u201cStories and movies have an old relationship.\u201d Fazal notes that politicians and shopkeepers both tell stories, the former to win votes, the latter to sell goods. For Fazal, the future belongs to storytellers because they\u2019re good at the lies needed to get ahead. This is good news for Samay, who considers himself an excellent liar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fazal is wrong in one respect, though \u2013 the future belongs to those who know English, as Samay\u2019s teacher also reminds him. The last film show for Samay is not, as we discover, the one film his father feels is appropriate for his family\u2019s viewing. That was merely the start of Samay\u2019s journey into film and filmmaking. But the world is changing. One movie gives way to another, and eventually, the film projector and reels are abandoned for a computer and CDs, which Fazal cannot operate because, as he notes, he\u2019s not a man for words or numbers. Samay and his friends trace the final journey of the projector and its film reels as they are transformed into spoons and bracelets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reviewed Palin\u2019s film Faith Connections<\/strong> when it screened at the 2013 Toronto International film festival, and I noted that one of its striking features was the place of children at the Kumbh Mela \u2013 children who are lost, abandoned, rescued, or runaways. Children are central to Palin\u2019s latest film, too \u2013 Samay, of course, but also his group of companions who are entranced by the magic of light and story just as much as he is. With them, he eventually builds a make-shift projector and steals film reels so they can try to create their own movie magic. Chhello Show<\/strong> is a lovely look at a childhood informed by adventures and storytelling and is a charming tribute to not only childhood and movies but also to a mother\u2019s love bundled into every lunch tiffin she packs for her son, and to a father who finally realizes that the ideal Indian boy might just be his own son, Samay, with his dreams and desires so very different from his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This review first appeared on Bollyspice<\/a> as part of the coverage of the Austin Indie Meme Festival 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day, Samay\u2019s father announces that he is taking his family to the movies. Samay (Bhavin Rabari) is curious about this \u2013 his family has not been to see a movie since he was five years old. \u201cListen,\u201d says his father, \u201conce you\u2019ve seen this one, you\u2019ll never watch another…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingChhello Show (“The Last Film Show”, dir. Pan Nalin, 2022)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[779],"tags":[776,774,772,775,778,545,777,773],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marathi-cinema","tag-bhavesh-shrimali","tag-bhavin-raberi","tag-chhello-show","tag-dipen-raval","tag-gujurati-cinema","tag-pan-nalin","tag-richa-meena","tag-the-last-film-show","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":925,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}