Sagai grew up watching films in a semi-legal video parlour in Mumbai, then like his father, he began working there. Now, still a great cinema lover, he tells this story: of the movies, pirate copies and a space that no longer exists.
The 1980s were a very particular time in Indian film culture due to the arrival of VHS. The urban middle-class abandoned cinemas to watch films in the privacy of their own homes, and likewise the working classes in urban slums and rural villages enjoyed unprecedented access to films thanks to illegal video parlours showing mostly pirated tapes. Videokaaran tells the story of one such movie lover: Sagai, an inhabitant of Mumbai, who first watched films obsessively in his local video parlour before becoming an employee there, as his father before him.
When Jagannathan Krishnan interviewed him for Videokaaran, this world was already lost, the only thing Sagai could do was recount his memories of those days, and show him the remnants of the places they played out in. What is revealed through Sagai’s testimony is an alternative entertainment industry of pirated movies, drugs and crime, the reality of which was far worse than anything audiences saw on the low-quality tapes. Videokaaran is an extraordinary document of one city’s criminal underbelly, and of the joys only film can provide.
– Olaf Möller
Film details
- Country of production
- India
- Year
- 2009
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2025
- Length
- 75"
- Medium/Format
- Digital
