Pirate Cinema Bombay Sneak Preview

Dec. 28, 2008 - Dec. 29, 2008

Pirate Cinema
Not just a series of screenings, or a collection of pirated movies, but the
question of making visible, and then temporarily obsolete, a specific social
relation, mediated by copyrighted images, and a specific type of separation,
or detachment, perfected by imaginary copyrights, that affects the art of
cinema, the space of cinema, and the discourse of cinema. Unlike New Cinema,
which is opposed to Old Cinema, Alternative Cinema, which is opposed to
Mainstream Cinema, Political Cinema, which is opposed to Unpolitical Cinema,
French Cinema, which is opposed to American Cinema, or Digital Cinema, which is
opposed to nothing at all, Pirate Cinema is opposed to Proprietary Cinema.

Pirate Cinema Bombay
Not just a rooftop, even though that's not the least of it. Most obviously, a
problem of transportation and translation. Pirate Cinema, unlike a pirated
movie, does not travel easily, it cannot be exported, imported, airlifted,
airdropped. It can't be booked, it won't be able to fill a space in the arts, or
a certain vacuum in arthouse. In the best case, it will itself create a vacuum.
Pirate Cinema can be translated, but not literally, and probably not by Pirate
Cinema, and it can be copied, but not without a particular kind of pragmatism,
or tactical ignorance, which itself would have to be copied, or translated. One
can say: "The Beverly Hills of Bollywood", but the question is, then what?

Pirate Cinema Bombay Sneak Preview
Not just a sneak preview, or rather not a sneak preview at all, not in the sense
that most of the images to be projected would reappear again. Still, it's a
hint, and still, there's a story, a hint at a story, or history within cinema,
which is sometimes even a history without cinema, and almost always a history
slightly outside cinema, just enough to make retrospective impossible, and
instead allow for preview. The story itself - how does one translate "punk"
again, to hindi... ah, we forgot, one doesn't - begins in the west, and then
goes east, and back in time. This screening, unlike some that will follow, is
much more encyclopedia than pedagogy. Two hours of film, two lines of dialogue.

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                                                            pirate cinema bombay
                                                            sundays from 7 to 10
                                                            www.piratecinema.org

Gallery: Pirate Cinema Bombay Sneak Preview