Gone but not forgotten

Cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi may have quit Bollywood a decade ago, but his love affair with the movies continues through his indefatigable documentation of single-screen theatres across India.

- AVANTIKA SHANKAR.

Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota (2006), directed by Naseeruddin Shah, has pretty much every indie film stalwart you can think of: Irrfan Khan, Paresh Rawal, Ratna Pathak Shah, Boman Irani, Konkona Sen Sharma—the cast list reads like a who's who of the industry.

The film plays out as four parallel storylines that come together in an apocalyptic climax. There was a discussion about how to make each of the stories look different, when the cinematographer of the project, Hemant Chaturvedi, had an unusual idea.

Two decades later, the film industry's appetite for experimentation has certainly shrunk. Earlier this year, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap voiced his frustrations with Bollywood’s increasing profit-mindedness when he announced he would be relocating to South India, where he believes the creative process is still respected. Chaturvedi quit the industry 10 years ago, despite having racked up a glittering filmography that includes Ram Gopal Varma’s Company (2002), the critically acclaimed Maqbool (2003), the game-changing Rendezvous with Simi Garewal and a season of Kaun Banega Crorepati. While he hasn't watched a movie since, his love for cinema transmuted into a scrappy, researcher-on-the-road project, taking him across the country to hunt down and photograph the single-screen cinema halls that still stand as monuments to the medium in its golden age.