Cinema Cart

"Salim Baba" is a must-see, though it won't be screened anymore this weekend. Just as Ice Cream Joe drives his van through North Baltimore, Salim Muhammed pushes a "cinema cart" through the crowded and poor neighborhoods of Kolkata, India. Children flock to him and drop a rupee into a box so they can duck their heads under a black hood. Inside the cart, the film is projected on a small sceen. The Lumiere projecter is, by the owner's estimate, 100 years old. What's projected is a literally taped-together version of one of the 50 Bollywood musical/action/romance movies that he owns. Muhammed, a businessman who just happens to work on a small scale, uses good old scissors and wrinkled and dirty pieces of cellophane tape to edit the films into shorter versions. "I know what the audience likes," he says in his native tongue. A little bit of song and dance, a litte bit of fighting -- not too much of anything -- and there you have it.

"Very much like the studio heads," noted Levinson.

The film's producer, Francisco Bello, was in attendance. He's trying to raise enough money to go back to India to give the subject of his documentary a film version that he can play in his cinema cart. Salim Muhammed already has a DVD version, but he can't put that into his projector and play it for the kids.

If we're lucky, the MFF will screen this Academy Award-nominated short film again during Artscape. See the link at left to learn more about the film.