BATTU'S BIOSCOPE

POLISH TITLE: KINIARZE Z KALKUTY

In India, there are still 2,000 mobile cinemas, one of which is “Battu’s Bioscope”, a colorful vehicle, containing an old Soviet projector, a few white cloth sheets, and several kilometers of celluloid film. Mr. Battu drives slowly along the sun-scorched roads of India, his quarrelsome assistant Mama at his side and the young Amit sitting on top of the truck, announcing the next show through a loudspeaker. The elderly Battu is an idealist who things you can change people by showing them films. The film crew accompanies his team from Calcutta to the distant Orissa province. This is the dwelling place of primitive tribes, whose way of life hasn’t changed for thousands of years. After years of trying, Mr. Battu has finally been issued a permit to show a film to these people who do not even know cinema exists. 

GENRE:
documentary
COUNTRY:
Polska
RUNNING TIME:
59'
YEAR:
DIRECTING:
Andrzej Fidyk
SCRIPT:
Andrzej Fidyk
DOP:
Mikolaj Nesterowicz
EDITOR:
Jan Mikołaj Mironowicz
PRODUCTION:
TVP S.A., Arte France, WDR (Germany)

Andrzej Fidyk »

is a dir­ector and scriptwriter of doc­u­ment­ary films and report­ages made for the Pol­ish Tele­vi­sion, a gradu­ate of Warsaw School of Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment of For­eign Trade. He began work­ing for TV in 1980 as a res­ult of a com­pet­i­tion for pro­duc­tion man­agers. From 1996 to 2004 he was the chief editor of doc­u­ment­ary films in TVP1.  He was the ori­gin­ator of pro­grammes such as: “Time for doc­u­ment­ary”, “Eyes wide open”, and the author of widely acclaimed films, includ­ing “Parade”, “Dance of the reeds”, and “Mobile cinema of dreams”.