The ‘Celluloid Chapter' in Jamshedpur: break journeys and film society cinephilia

This article narrates the inception history of Celluloid Chapter , a film society in Jamshedpur, which emerged in the late 1980s. In the mid-1980s, when the film society movement in India was gradually waning out of the major metropolitan cities owing to the influx of video and informal and formal networks of satellite television, smaller film societies such as Celluloid Chapter rose from the peripheries to national prominence. This article narrates how through their activities, film programmes and publications, a relatively small film society energized circuits of celluloid film travel, creating alternative screening spaces and disseminating art cinema discourses to small town audiences. With the industrial town of Jamshedpur as a node on the film society network, this article underlines a lesser-known fragment of contemporary Indian screen cultures, which is informed by the creation of alternative and participatory spaces of collective film viewing experiences, in the absence of access to commercial or institutional theatrical spaces. Moreover, navigating through film society publications such as film festival pamphlets, newsletters, brochures, photographs of events, regional film journals and publications, this article describes how this small-town film society countered the narratives of crises and criticism brewing within the movement and now remains as an informal archive of film society cinephilia.