Event Details

Documentary Film Screening  

An NCPA Presentation in collaboration with Cinema Collective   

The Reality Check film series promotes and encourages documentary filmmakers in India, whose work reflects life and culture in the country today in a provocative blend of creativity and integrity.

Prabhat Pheri
Hindi, Marathi and English Film with subtitles (89 mins)

After more than two decades of producing some of the masterpieces of the early talkie era, the Prabhat Film Company (1929-1953) was liquidated and shut down. It was auctioned and exchanged various hands of private ownership in the following years. In 1959, the Government of India acquired the campus and two years later, set up the Film Institute of India as an institution of training students in film practice.

Prabhat Pheri literally means the rounds made on foot by mendicants between daybreak and morning proper. During these ‘rounds’, they sing songs praising the divine, as they ask for alms. It is symbolic of a journey, and the intent of the film was to take a journey into the long tradition of the campus where film practice has flourished since the silent era in its various forms: as a film company, a studio for shooting Bombay films and a film school.

It was the ‘ghosts’ of the campus: the studios, the equipment; anecdotes, memories and tales heard from those to whom the space has been familiar for decades, dear and sacrosanct. And, lastly, the images themselves, of films and photographs, the ‘ghosts’ of past years, that we attempted to document.

Directed by Jessica Sadana & Samarth Dixit
Cinematography: Jessica Sadana
Editing:  Samarth Dixit
Sound: Gautam Nair
Producer and Commissioning Editor: Rajiv Mehrotra
Executive Producers: Tulika Srivastava & Ridhima Mehra

 The film screening will be followed by a discussion. 

Admission on a first-come-first-served basis. NCPA Members will get preferential seating till 6.20 pm.