Mumbai Mania

The concept of pirate cinema is something that can shatter the boundaries of this society; Indian society has the largest film industry and is possible the highest revenue churning market in the country. But two guys from Germany have come here with a very interesting initiative that they started off in Germany called Pirate Cinema.

Pirate Cinema in a nutshell is watching movies that are downloaded off the Internet, but of course it’s not going to be something like the dark knight or escape from Madagascar. The movies are something that can let you go back thinking about an underlined or subtle message that they hope you get.

A variety of filmmakers like Jose Benazeraf, James Benning, Guy Debord, Paula Delsol, Philippe Garrel, Jean-Luc Godard, Isidore Isou, Ken Jacobs, Joseph Marzano, Aleksandr Medvedkin, Jonas Mekas, Artavazd Peleshian, Nicholas Ray, Satyajit Ray, Jack Smith, Agnes Varda, Dziga Vertov, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski and Andy Warhol were showcased during the sneak preview.

The films have been on for four Sundays and incidentally there will be two more screenings this weekend and the next weekend. We have participated in two screenings the first one, the sneak preview, that was the introduction to Pirate Cinema where the concept was unfolded to a small audience and yesterday a movie called Safe was greeted by a full audience on mats, sofas and a very composed atmosphere.

The essence of pirate cinema is sharing knowledge, people sharing movies, in many way helps enlighten a community, not only save on precious bandwidth that is a bottleneck in India. This is interesting for people to come together to watch movies, mingle and basically have something interesting and offbeat to do on their weekends, thanks to Pirate Cinema Bombay!

If you attend, don’t forget to take a blank DVD for the take away movies, for more details on Pirate Cinema Bombay take a look at the hosts of Pirate Cinema Bombay!