"Aren't there umpteen things that have become useless? Aren't there many memories that we have dumped in the godown?" - Poonam Rahim, film distributor

Film society movement in Kerala is one that evokes a lot of passion, resentment and also derision. Passion because it opened up a new world of experience and narratives to a generation of youngsters; resentment because many 'local' image-makers feel that cinephiles of the movement, in their self-engrossed indulgence with European masters, didn't do justice to them by taking their 'experiments' seriously; and derision on the part of people from the industry and also from the television-fed generation who were baffled by the religious fervour and fanaticism of the film society cineastes. Definitely, in the Malayalam cultural scene, film society movement is something that one can only love or hate, but never ignore.

KR Manoj's documentary 16 mm – Memories, Movement and a Machine is an attempt to look into the innards of the period, unwinding images, memories, and also bitterness. It is a journey at two levels: on the one are the first person narratives of those who were part of its history: film society organizers, activists, members, critics, filmmakers etc. On the other are images that try to capture the enigma of this cultural interface, a machine entering the lives of a generation of young people and changing their lives for ever; the coming into being of a new kind of collective in the altar of cinema, something akin to spiritual groups who create and share certain esoteric symbols, rituals and ceremonies, and with their own gods and goddesses, the sheer experience of watching narratives from alien, faraway places or virtually 'reading' them through English subtitles. There you find huge neon sign boards and hoardings of western masters blazing above our all-too 'local' streets and surroundings, and a soundtrack from some alien language 'speaking' over the visuals of malayalee faces, street crowds and scenes from Kerala towns.

So, the format of the film tries to vibe with the unsettling experience and cultural shock of a very provincial malayalee suddenly entering the world of European narratives, and most surprisingly, actually finding his ways and even refuge there. In the film, an activist says, "It was through those films that we eagerly awaited week after week that countries like Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia became more familiar to us than even our own neighbourhood towns. In a way, we were turning into global citizens". For instance, the slogan of one of the film societies – Dialogo, in Calicut, was "Join Film Society and See the World!"

Working as a counterpoint to these narrative streams are the words of Poonam Rahim, a film distributor from Trichur, who looks at the history of the 'movement' from the point of view of the material – the material of celluloid film rolls, reels and the machine called a 16 mm projector. For him with the movement, certain films and certain kinds of films suddenly become popular, a new class of viewers comes into being, creating a demand for that noisy machine and the tattered prints. It could only be sheer passion that could have made people sit through the screenings of such horrible prints, something the film enthusiasts from DVD-generation would not be able to imagine. The shots of his godown says it all.

The film resists nostalgic gloating over a glorious, bygone era, and anchors itself in the details of the period: the kind of people it touched and transformed, the brochures and booklets it produced, the passion it generated, and the ripples it created. In the process, 16mm – Memories, Movement and a Machine reveals itself as many things for many people: a tool, a burden, a sensuous object, an antique object, a obsolete equipment; it is a 'weapon' for social change for some, a nostalgic memory for certain others, a screening equipment that desperately needed to be lightened and made user-friendly for certain people, while for others it was a means of livelihood. Like any other machine, with the coming of new post-celluloid technologies it has practically become redundant, but it still burrs on in the mind of a generation of cineastes, which is what the film is trying to elaborate.

The film has won the award for the best documentary at the recently held VIBGYOR, Thrissur and Manjeri International Film Festival.