Meals Ready

The debate on death penalty is loud and impassioned. Instead of echoing that cacophony, The Death of Us, quietly reflects on a range of cases in which the death penalty was pronounced. Sometimes, ending in the execution of the convicted; sometimes in commutation to a life sentence; and sometimes to acquittal and release. Speaking to some who have been on death row, and others closely involved with the cases, we engage in complex conversations on crime and punishment, revenge and justice, popular rhetoric and personal experiences. Only to find ourselves confronted by larger ethical and moral questions across time and space.

For some, India’s single screen cinemas are a legacy to be celebrated and preserved. For others, they remain a place to see movies. Yet others remember that it was within those crumbling edifices that the magic of the movies was first discovered, and deep, lasting connections made. Cinema Pe Cinema meanders through theatres in small towns and big cities across India, creating a memoryscape of women and men whose lives have been touched by single screen cinemas. As they reminisce about film-going and its connections to their lives, the film becomes an act of resistance against forgetting single screen cinema theatres as they shutter down across India. An effort to keep the memories of some films alive through traces of their audio and visual ephemera. A shared cinematic space in which diverse audiences speak of single screen theatre-going experiences that often carry forward into multiplex cinemas in these polarised times.