In Pan Nalin’s The Last Film Show, the death of film has never hit harder. The Samsara director and Indian auteur has established himself over the years as a filmmaker with a distinct flair for visual storytelling, his films a kaleidoscopic whirl of images that speak to the simple power of colors and lights to evoke an emotional response. With an impressive career making documentaries, feature films, shorts, commercials, and television, Nalin looks back on his own journey to becoming a filmmaker in The Last Film Show, his most autobiographical and personal effort to date. 

The Last Film Show starts and ends with an acknowledgement. A tip of the hat to the rolodex of directors who’ve paved the path for other aspiring filmmakers to follow in their footsteps; the names of the Lumiere Brothers, Kubrick, David Lean, Tarkvosky, and Eadweard Muybridge flashed on the screen before Nalin treats us to the first frame of his making. Pioneers all, each who’ve lit the way for Nalin and motivated a career in filmmaking, Nalin’s respect and reverence for the greats is never far from mind.

Set in a remote village in Gujarat (where Nalin himself grew up), Last Film Show pictures film as an escape route from the life of patience and faith that the devout father of 9-year old Samay  (Bhavin Rabari) professes. The child’s infatuation with movies motivate an obsession with filmmaking, Samay and his friends turning junkyard scrapes into DIY projectors, a way to screen the spare bites of 35mm celluloid they’ve pilfered from the local theaters.

When Samay and his friends get tossed out of the rundown Galaxy theater after sneaking in without buying a ticket, the rascal hatches a plan. Trading his mother’s delectable cooking with a middle-aged and kindly projectionist for admission to the booth as a way to watch movies for free, he forms a bond with film that goes on to affect the trajectory of his life.

Nalin frames the coming-of-age story against a modernizing India, where technological advancement means automation and the end of low-skilled labor for many. The train station where his father hawks chai tea will be out of commission shortly as a high-speed rail takes its place. A projectionist is only valued when movies need actually projecting, a skill set that the transition to digital killed off in the early 2010s. Even the owner of the Galaxy Theater struggles to find painters to give the rundown theater a needed facelift without shelling out astronomical fees.

The most affecting and haunting piece of The Last Film Show arrives alongside this advancement, Nalin staging an elegy to 35mm film where reels of film are melted down and repurposed into plastic products, like colorful bangles. There’s something quietly devastating about watching Samay’s stories being melted down and turned into disposal trinkets. Perhaps it’s as simple as the tragedy and pain of physical transformation. Or perhaps Nalin wants to comment on the modern proliferation of content over art. Either way, it’s a deeply-felt exploration of the power of light, film, and dreams and what it means to lose out on what is clearly such a sacred art form in the eyes of Samay and Nalin.

CONCLUSION: A love letter and elegy for film and the unvalued art of the projectionist, ‘The Last Film Show’ is a beautifully-filmed and involving story of coming-of-age in a darkened movie theater in a rapidly modernizing India.

B

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