Presented by Bread Garden Market, Little Village and FilmScene

Not one, but TWO special screenings to ensure Iowa City audiences can catch this Cannes prize winner with filmmakers in attendance from Mumbai, India!

DIALOGUE: Directors Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya in person all the way from Mumbai.
Sunday, November 13 & Monday, November 14, 7pm

Cannes Film Festival prize-winner THE CINEMA TRAVELLERS follows trips to the Toronoto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival with a trip to Iowa City as the eight selection in our Vino Vérité series presented by Bread Garden Market.

The Vino Vérité series features talented new voices and established filmmakers influenced by the vérité tradition in person to present their thought-provoking, chance-taking, and visually-arresting films. Each selection is paired with hand-selected wines from Bread Garden Market.

Tickets: $25 public / $20 for members. Includes wine tasting, film, hors d'oeuvres and filmmaker reception.

6:30 Hors d'oeuvres & wine tasting
7:00 Theater open for seating
7:15 Screening
9:00 Reception with filmmaker, wine and dessert

THE CINEMA TRAVELLERS

"A masterpiece. It’s seldom that a documentary is this spellbinding, this can’t-move-from-my-seat-or-even-think-of-turning-my-eyes-away bewitching, all the while being so human and touching." —Huffington Post

This poetic documentary tells the story of Mohammed and Bapu, the last of a vanishing tribe—mobile "tent cinema" exhibitors—that bring 35mm celluloid dreams to far-flung towns and villages across India.

Projecting on makeshift screens at village fairs, the two struggle with both the weight of obsolescence and the increasing fragility of their enormous rusty, clanking projectors, kept in barely working order by a beguiling repairman named Prakash, whose ingenious self-oiling projector is a thing of beauty even though it too is already obsolete.

This vibrant five-years-in-the-making documentary is a real Last Picture Show. A bittersweet elegy to the magic of cinema brightened with the wonder of still images coming to life at 24 frames per second.

A stirring tribute to the magic of movies.

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Filmmakers Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya are based in Mumbai, India. They have directed documentaries for the Guardian, Al Jazeera English and Doordarshan India prior to this, their first feature length documentary. Their work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Bertha Foundation, Filmmaker Fund, PMA WorldView, Asian Cinema Fund, Goethe-Institut, India Foundation for the Arts, Arts Council of England and the University of Heidelberg.

Cannes Film Festival — World Premiere
Cannes Film Festival — Special Jury Prize: Le Prix du Documentaire
New York Film Festival — Official Selection
Toronto Film Festival — Official Selection

"An evocative, subtle and heartfelt snapshot, it also refrains from sentimentality. For all the fondness for the old, there’s equal thrill of the new." —The Guardian

"Captures the last minutes of these magical mobile cinemas halfway between circuses and film theaters...bathed in misty Indian light that weaves a spell in reds and golds." —Hollywood Reporter

"Reverentially photographed. In this loving nonfiction portrait they capture wonder in the eyes of local attendees who gather in tents to watch movies together on a big screen." —Film Comment

"If the cinema is magic, then the nomadic projectionists and technicians of “The Cinema Travelers” are its Oz-like wizards. A heartfelt tribute to India’s cinematic-caravan traditions and the disappearing art, skill and spiritual thrill of 35mm projection."—Variety